ENHANCING CTV CAMPAIGN RELEVANCE THROUGH CURATION AND OPTIMIZATION
A major North American professional sports league partnered with PubMatic and illuma to engage sports fans across Connected TV (CTV). Together, they delivered privacy-safe, relevant advertising experiences at scale while ensuring campaigns were continuously optimized for quality reach and engagement. By combining PubMatic’s premium CTV inventory and curation capabilities with illuma’s AI-driven contextual intelligence, the league was able to connect with fans in the moments that mattered most — with campaigns optimized intelligently throughout their lifecycle.
THE CHALLENGE
A leading North American professional sports league needed a smarter way to connect with highly engaged sports audiences on CTV. With more fans turning to streaming to watch live sports, the challenge was to reach the right viewers in premium environments, while maintaining relevance, scale, and efficiency.
The league also needed a privacy-safe, future-proof approach that could adapt dynamically to shifting audience behaviors and ensure that every impression was delivered in the most relevant and impactful context.
THE SOLUTION
PubMatic and illuma partnered to activate curated audience segments around top-performing sports content. Leveraging PubMatic’s premium CTV inventory and illuma’s AI-powered contextual categorization, delivery was optimized in real time to maximize engagement and performance. Throughout the campaign, insights revealed that while the audience engaged heavily with sports content, particularly basketball and collegiate sports, they also showed strong engagement across pop culture and entertainment environments.
Key elements included:
- Curated CTV packages via PubMatic for premium reach
- illuma’s advanced contextual optimization to classify content into granular, scalable categories
- Real-time, in-flight optimization to improve performance and scale
THE RESULTS
The partnership delivered exceptional outcomes, driving stronger reach and engagement across major sporting events. illuma consistently outperformed video completion benchmarks, achieving 99.41% VCR during the Q1 flight (vs. 93% KPI) and 98.88% VCR during the Q2 flight. These results reinforced illuma and PubMatic as trusted partners for delivering privacy-safe, high-performing CTV campaigns at scale.