Welcome to Partner Perspectives, PubMatic’s series showcasing the industry leaders shaping the future of programmatic advertising. In each blog, we highlight innovative partners and customers delivering exceptional results across the industry.
In this edition, we’re featuring DIRECTV Advertising, the advertising arm of one of the leading premium TV platforms in America. With a dynamic solution that unifies linear and streaming experiences, DIRECTV Advertising is helping buyers reach audiences with the scale of traditional TV and the precision of digital.
We spoke with Tyler DeNicola, Head of Programmatic, about how the company is unifying linear and streaming, unlocking new value in live sports, and leveraging AI-powered innovation to deliver greater accountability and performance for advertisers.
Live sports remain one of the most powerful drivers of audience engagement. How is DIRECTV capitalizing on the scale and immediacy of live sports across both linear and streaming?
Live sports is the last true appointment viewing, and through partners like PubMatic, we’re ensuring advertisers can tap into those culturally defining moments with the scale and precision premium inventory demands. Sports make up many of the top-watched programs on TV, but as sports rights splinter across broadcast, cable, and streaming, it has become challenging for both fans and advertisers. DIRECTV has created a dynamic digital TV platform that aggregates games seamlessly across linear and streaming so viewers can find and watch everything in one place, and that aggregation drives engagement.
Our goal is to make our sports buying pathways as flexible as possible. Since our digital transformation began last year, our internal data shows that we’ve enabled on average 40% more live sports impressions on average with streaming than we had on linear satellite alone. But sports on DIRECTV don’t just deliver impressions — they drive outcomes. Whether it is “always on” sports packaging, in-game linear and streaming inventory across every game, innovative formats like pause ads, or extending the impact of live sports moments beyond the living room to planes, sports bars and hotels, we can deliver scale, attention, and accountability — all on one seamless TV platform.
DIRECTV has been introducing new ad experiences, including creative formats like pause ads. How do these innovations fit into your broader strategy to modernize premium TV advertising?
We’re building a broader range of ad formats that go beyond the traditional 15- and 30-second spot to give our demand partners more ways to connect with highly engaged viewers. Our Pause Ads are designed as a non-intrusive,
As we expand our pause ads offering with programmatic access and new creative capabilities, we’re proving that premium TV can be just as flexible and performance-driven as digital — without sacrificing reach or quality. Through our partnership with PubMatic, we’re able to customize these experiences using creative optimization tools and flexible programmatic capabilities that better align messaging with viewer behavior and context. We’re modernizing what it means to advertise on TV, and PubMatic’s programmatic infrastructure is a key part of how we get those experiences in front of the right audiences.
As automation evolves into more intelligent, agentic systems, how is DIRECTV using AI and advanced analytics to improve yield, targeting, and campaign performance across your inventory?
At DIRECTV Advertising, AI isn’t a future concept — it’s embedded directly into how we operate every day. AI and advanced analytics are helping us make more informed decisions across our advertising business. That includes how we package inventory, price it, and optimize campaigns. AI also helps us refine audience segmentation, enabling us to build more bespoke audiences that better align with advertiser goals. The result is a more flexible, performance-driven platform that maximizes yield, strengthens sell-through, and delivers measurable outcomes for our clients.
More broadly, these technologies enable us to intelligently complement diverse demand sources — from SMB advertisers to large agency partners and performance-based buyers. By analyzing demand patterns and campaign performance, AI helps us approach this increasingly diversified demand landscape more strategically. It also helps us identify new opportunities outside our traditional areas of focus and surface them earlier, allowing us to adapt and innovate more quickly. With PubMatic’s AI-powered infrastructure, we’re making smarter, real-time decisions that drive stronger targeting and yield across every impression in our inventory.
Advertisers increasingly expect accountability from premium video. How is DIRECTV approaching measurement to demonstrate the value of live and high-impact inventory?
Advertisers increasingly expect greater accountability from premium video, particularly around live and other
Our approach to measurement starts with maintaining an open and partner-agnostic ecosystem — our entire DIRECTV platform is authenticated. In a programmatic environment where much of the measurement and analytics occur on the buy-side through partner tools, we focus heavily on ensuring transparency across the bid stream, including supporting alternative identity solutions, rich content metadata, and privacy-compliant signals that enable buyers to understand exactly what they are purchasing. DIRECTV delivers audiences when engagement is at its peak, and we’re making it easier than ever for brands to show up in those moments with PubMatic.
Ultimately, accountability means giving advertisers clear visibility into what they’re buying — including where campaigns run and the price points associated with that inventory — so they can accurately measure return on ad spend and campaign performance across the supply chain.
The boundaries between traditional TV and streaming continue to blur. Where do you see the greatest opportunity for growth as the ecosystem becomes more unified?
The biggest opportunity in this converging ecosystem is helping advertisers move seamlessly across linear and streaming, and PubMatic is the programmatic partner helping us make it happen. Greater standardization across the industry is a highly positive development for buyers, particularly because it allows them to transact in ways that best suit their strategies.
DIRECTV has been ahead of the curve on this for the last several years, and as more buyers shift toward programmatic buying, we’re
We’re also able to extend our addressable capabilities across this unified ecosystem, which is a unique strength for DIRECTV. That combination of flexibility, transparency, and addressable scale allows us to deliver a differentiated solution for advertisers navigating the evolving TV landscape.
A Unified TV Advertising Future
DIRECTV Advertising is helping redefine what premium TV can deliver — pairing the scale of live sports with innovative ad experiences, intelligent automation, and measurable performance. By bringing together linear and streaming inventory within one flexible, programmatic framework, they are creating new opportunities for advertisers to reach engaged audiences with greater precision and control.
At PubMatic, we’re proud to partner with DIRECTV Advertising to support this evolution. Through flexible buying pathways and advanced programmatic capabilities, we’re working together to make premium TV more accessible, transparent, and performance-driven for today’s marketers.
Stay tuned for more Partner Perspectives as we highlight the buyers, publishers, and platforms who are driving growth and innovation with PubMatic.
