With the glut of daily fantasy advertising on sports TV these days, it was interesting to hear network ad sales executives describe DraftKings and FanDuel as “direct response” advertisers.
“They can see trends in real time,” said Seth Winter, NBC Sports Group’s executive vice president of sales and marketing. “In many ways, they are a direct response advertiser. They see what environments work for them based on how many new players they acquire. They also see what events are helping to acquire new players.”
Football obviously is a big focus for these companies, judging by the amount of advertising networks are carrying on their NFL and college football games. But an event like last month’s U.S. Open on ESPN also offered a clue. If the companies saw an uptick in people playing daily fantasy tennis, they would have increased the amount of ads they put into those telecasts, ad executives say.
“They can modify their media investments based on that data that they see,” Winter said. “They talk to us all the time based on information they glean almost hourly.”
Ed Erhardt, ESPN’s president of global marketing and sales, agreed.
“These companies don’t buy certain sports,” he said. “They are direct response advertisers. They know what works and what doesn’t for their product. But they are across all of our platforms.”
