SAN JUAN, PR – In a rapidly shifting media landscape, the rise of digital video consumption is not just a trend — it’s reshaping the very core of advertising strategy, particularly when it comes to live events and sports. Jessie Schwartzfarb, executive vice president and head of video investment at Dentsu, shared insights into the digital transformation during a recent conversation at the Beet Retreat San Juan.
“As live events have migrated from linear to digital, there’s a reason why they have migrated,” Schwartzfarb explained. “We saw during the rise of COVID, first and foremost, a significant steep increase in consumption of digital video.”
That increase, she noted, catalyzed a larger industry-wide shift in content consumption. Entertainment programming, once dominant on linear platforms, has taken a backseat to sports and live events, which now make up over 90% of linear programming.
“What happens is that people want to capitalize on that in the digital world,” she said.
This demand has led to a wave of innovation in how live content is bought, sold and served.
“It has first happened in a very direct insertion order perspective, moving a little bit from there to PG [programmatic guaranteed], and now [to a] programmatic way of dealing with media.”
More accessible ad inventories
The evolution of programmatic buying has brought previously exclusive inventory within reach for more advertisers.
“What it has really done is democratized the inventory,” said Schwartzfarb. “People who did not normally have access to that inventory now have access.”
The result? A more inclusive advertising ecosystem.
“We see benefit in multiple areas,” she continued. “People who could not necessarily afford to be in a sports environment before… can now dip their toes into the water.”
For publishers and platforms, the benefit is just as strong: “They have a wider swath of advertisers they can bring into the fold and increase the monetization of their inventory.”
Schwartzfarb said tens of thousands of new brands are expected to enter the programmatic space, many of them direct-to-consumer companies looking for broader reach after exhausting lower-funnel tactics.
“They’re now looking to sort of find their next wave of consumers by having a more mass reach opportunity like programmatic sports,” she said.
Rights deals and adtech
Key to unlocking this potential is the evolution of rights deals and adtech.
“We’re seeing more rights deals happening where you can dynamically ad insert within the digital landscape,” she said. “But there’s still a lot of technology that needs to evolve—and the standards that we have need to evolve—to accommodate a dynamically ad-inserted environment.”
Looking ahead, Schwartzfarb expressed excitement about the innovation on the horizon.
“Whether it’s contextual advertising, creative targeting, or interesting ad units that are coming into the space, there’s so much exciting stuff happening,” she said. “I’m looking forward to having more opportunities for my clients to lean into interesting ways to reach their consumers beyond just serving them an ad in a linear or digital environment.”
You’re watching coverage from Beet Retreat San Juan 2025, presented by Cognitiv, Index Exchange & TransUnion. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
