The expansion of streaming TV has created substantial opportunities for both demand- and supply-side participants. However, live event inventory—such as sports broadcasts, political debates, and award ceremonies—presents a unique set of operational and technical challenges that current programmatic infrastructure is not fully optimized to support. These challenges are driven by the volatility of live event timelines and the stringent latency and scale requirements needed to deliver personalized ads concurrently to millions of viewers in real time. Addressing these issues requires the standardization of signaling mechanisms and metadata exchange to ensure interoperability and reduce friction in live ad delivery.
To meet this need, IAB Tech Lab is collaborating with stakeholders across the programmatic ecosystem to develop the Live Event Ad Playbook (LEAP)—a series of technical recommendations and protocol enhancements aimed at enabling scalable, low-latency, and reliable ad delivery for live streaming environments.
There are 4 phases that are expected to make up this set of standards:
You can learn more about how the Live Event Ad Serving Sub-Working Group came up with these phases and what they include in this blog post from Index Exchange’s Catherine Cho.
The first deliverable for this Playbook is the Concurrent Streams API. This API aims to provide a standard methodology for subscribers to ask ‘how many viewers are in a stream?’ when a live event is occurring. In essence, how many devices are actually streaming the piece of content that’s happening in real time.
Concurrent Streams API is in Public Comment until July 14, 2025.
Companies who want to get involved with later stages of the Live Event Ad Playbook can join the Live Events Sub Group by emailing membership@iabtechlab.com