The convergence of sports, streaming and shopping is creating new opportunities for brands seeking to connect with new, active, diverse audiences.
With figures like Caitlin Clark, Simone Biles and Livvy Dunne driving interest and attendance, women’s sports are positioning themselves as a prime advertising investment opportunity.
“I truly believe women’s sports is going to be positioned to be one of the greatest growth markets and investment opportunities from an advertising standpoint,” said Anjlee Majmudar, VP of programmatic for North America at Brainlabs, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
CTV collaboration needed
While women’s sports represents a specific growth opportunity, the broader connected TV landscape continues evolving rapidly, driven by streaming giants like Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Hulu.
Majmudar identified three key areas where publishers and advertisers must collaborate to unlock CTV’s full potential. “First is really around collaboration around unified measurement. Right now, this is the biggest gap because the metrics aren’t standardized, and the signals that are being sent back and forth are not the same across each publisher,” she explained.
Ad fraud prevention represents another critical collaboration point, particularly in programmatic environments. “This is non-negotiable,” Majmudar emphasized. “We need to continue to maintain trust and transparency in CTV, and publishers and advertisers really need to work hand in hand to ensure that those preventional measures are in place.”
Measurement challenges require new approaches
The question of how to measure and optimize CTV investments remains thorny, with Majmudar acknowledging there’s “no one size fits all” solution.
“Traditionally, we look a lot around view-through rate – for CTV, those generally tend to be high. But now (we are also) looking at things like interactive (TV) interaction, especially if you’re leveraging things like QR codes or clickable overlays or shoppable components,” Majmudar said.
Interactive CTV campaigns have achieved engagement rates 4.6 times higher than mobile video and 10.3 times higher than desktop video, according to LiveRamp.
AI’s expanding role
“AI is going to be able to analyze tons of viewer data, behavioral patterns, content preferences, demographics, all in real time,” Majmudar explained. “So I think it’s going to enhance targeting capabilities, which is only going to be beneficial for both the publishers and the advertisers.”
For fraud detection, Majmudar highlighted AI’s ability to spot anomalies in real time, detecting issues like fake impressions or non-human traffic without waiting for delayed reporting.
Brainlabs is already implementing AI solutions for reporting and attribution. “(It’s about) cross-platform attribution and reporting, really being able to tie in ad exposures to real world outcomes, and then automating reporting,” she said.
You’re watching “The Road to POSSIBLE 2025: Transparency and New Signals for CTV Success,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Peer39. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
