Humor and celebrity now dominate Super Bowl ads; brands now favor memeable, star-driven comedy as safer attention drivers and a chance at social-media virality.
Super Bowl campaigns aren’t one-size-fits-all; brands are now splitting between full-scale TV buys and multi-channel activations that extend beyond the broadcast.
NFL viewership favors broadcast as traditional TV draws the biggest audiences, but streaming’s ad effectiveness is unmatched.
Fanatics is building a studio to control sports storytelling. Owning content lets the brand deepen engagement, extend athlete partnerships, and avoid bidding wars for live sports rights.
The Olympics and World Cup will propel sports ads to a record year, pushing global spend past $1 trillion.
FIFA’s deal taps short-form video to spark fandom, fuel real-time viewing, and drive World Cup commerce
At CES, Amazon is repositioning Amazon Ads as a full advertising ecosystem rather than a commerce-adjacent channel, emphasizing unified reach across TV, streaming, live sports, audio, and programmatic partners.
On today’s podcast episode, we discuss our “very specific but highly unlikely” predictions for 2026: sports team sponsorships pushing the envelope, the ceiling for TikTok Shop, and a budding relationship between creators and retail media networks. Join Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Senior Analyst Ross Benes, Senior Forecasting Analyst Oscar Orozco, and Principal Analyst Max Willens. Listen everywhere, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
42% of consumers discuss sporting events with friends or family after seeing out-of-home (OOH) ads, according to a September report from The Harris Poll.
YouTube TV will offer over 10 new, genre-specific subscription bundles in 2026, with one option focused on sports, per a company announcement. YouTube TV Sports Plan will give users access to major sports networks and broadcasters that the pay TV provider offers, including NBC Sports Network, all ESPN networks and ESPN Unlimited, and FS1. Advertisers who thrive will rely on an omnichannel approach that keeps track of where viewers are watching while simultaneously accounting for the enduring relevance of linear to reach sports audiences.
Publicis Groupe’s 100th-anniversary film, “A Lion Never Gives Up,” blends live action with 4,500 AI-generated images to retell the company’s evolution and project its future. With more than half its workforce now in data, engineering, and AI, leadership says the next era will reward companies that fuse creativity with machine-driven operational scale. The film lands as Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG reshapes the competitive field, and Publicis argues its AI maturity gives it an edge in a more concentrated market.
Dentsu forecasts the global advertising market will surpass $1 trillion for the first time in 2026, growing 5.1% and powered by digital channels that will capture nearly 69% of total spend. Retail media leads with projected 14%–16% growth, while online video and social also expand double digits. Major global events—including the Winter Olympics, FIFA World Cup, and a packed political calendar—will drive attention and pricing pressure across markets. APAC remains the fastest-growing region, led by India and China, while the US will represent about 40% of worldwide spend. For marketers, algorithm-first planning, advanced measurement, and early tentpole buying will be critical.
YouTube and NBCUniversal are doubling down on creator-led Olympic storytelling for Milano Cortina 2026 after Paris proved how strongly younger viewers gravitate toward digital personalities. Top YouTubers will chronicle the journeys of 40 Team USA athletes, with unprecedented access inside trials, training environments, and even the Athlete Village. Nearly half of global sports fans—and 59% of adults ages 18 to 44—follow sports influencers, while YouTube captured 17% of all global Olympic engagement in 2024. For marketers, creators now sit at the center of Olympic discovery, highlights, and cultural relevance, making YouTube indispensable to Games-era planning.
Global sports rights costs across streaming and TV will increase 20% by 2030, per an Ampere Analysis estimate. That growth will send the total cost of sports media rights to over $78 billion. Marketing around live sports is paramount because sporting events deliver reliable audiences and high ad effectiveness, especially on streaming platforms. Advertisers with tighter budgets might struggle as costs increase—but there are still opportunities to advertise around live sports without breaking budgets.
Sports rights continue to fragment in the digital-first era with Major League Baseball’s (MLB) new media rights deals across Netflix, NBC, and ESPN. The MLB spreading game rights across platforms exacerbates the fragmentation issue advertisers are already facing. With fragmentation only likely to increase, brands that thrive will invest in strategic cross-platform campaigns and keep budgets flexible to follow viewers where they’re watching.
Broadcast TV’s share of viewing declined YoY in October despite inching up slightly from the prior month thanks to the NFL season, per Nielsen’s total TV/streaming estimates. Meanwhile, streaming continued to increase its viewership share—highlighting how live sports viewers are increasingly shifting to digital. Those who thrive in the shift to digital will steadily increase budgets for sports streaming while still maintaining some investment in cable and broadcast to reach the many live sports viewers who continue to watch through traditional channels.
Disney and YouTube TV struck a new carriage agreement late Friday, ending a nearly two-week clash that made more than 20 Disney channels, including ESPN and ABC, unavailable on the pay TV service. The outcome reinforces that YouTube is one of the most powerful forces in digital video, pay TV, and streaming. With a pay TV audience that eclipses its competitors and a viewership that is increasingly moving to digital platforms, YouTube TV is well positioned to capture sports-hungry audiences and the advertisers eager to reach them.
Disney channels, including ESPN and ABC, have officially been removed from leading pay TV platform YouTube TV after Disney and Google failed to resolve a distribution dispute. Even as YouTube TV gives subscribers access to a large number of non-Disney channels, its ad effectiveness could be harmed without as broad of a sports portfolio—necessitating cautious investment.