Data from dynamic ad insertion company Yospace has revealed that almost 6 billion addressable ads were stitched into streaming feeds across the four weeks of this summer’s Euro 2024 football championship.
That’s a 46 per cent increase compared to a standard month of traffic, said the company, and it would take 51,000 years to watch all the ads back-to-back.
According to the company, the most watched ad break came in England’s semi-final versus Netherlands. Over nine million ads were stitched across four continents during the half-time ad break.
The biggest impact on ads was in the quarter final between Spain and Germany, when Florian Wirtz’s goal levelled the match in the 89th minute, taking it into extra time. Coming so close to the traditional full-time ad break, the goal drove the audience for the break up 33 per cent compared to other games in the knockout stages of the competition, said Yospace.
During the final between Spain and England, Yospace reported a 22 per cent increase in mobile traffic. The closing moments, as England tried to find another equaliser, saw a 12 per cent increase in mobile traffic compared to the first 20 mins of the second half, said the company.
Tim Sewell, CEO at Yospace commented: “With almost 6 billion ads stitched by Yospace during Euro 2024, the value of major sports events for both broadcasters and advertisers is abundantly clear. The media industry is preparing for the next phase in growth as streaming is set to become the primary method of watching and monetising valuable sports rights. The scale is only going to grow from here and only the most robust ad insertion technologies with dynamic prefetch are going to be able to meet that demand. It is critical to business success that rights-holders maintain the highest possible fill-rates, no matter how unpredictable the live events may be.”
