What is going on with Kayo’s advertising strategy?
Confused by Kayo Ads, Mutiny's Henry Innis writes about the "biggest mystery" in advertising.
Every Friday, Saturday, or Sunday (sometimes on Thursday) I watch my beloved Manly Sea Eagles.
It’s a long season. Before 2021, I used to catch them very occasionally at the pub. Travel on Thursday and Friday nights usually saw me stuck in an airport lounge, ruing my poor luck and choices as I drudged through the dreaded Sydney-Melbourne commute.
Today, I’m blessed with the wonderful service that is Kayo.
I can’t speak highly enough of it. It’s quick, streams fast and lets me watch live sport virtually anywhere. It’s changed the way I can watch my favourite sport. It’s addictive and often full screen on my TV when I’m (rarely) home.
But there’s one thing that baffles me.
The ads.
You see virtually every week I get caught in an ad break. In sport, I never mind them. They’re usually quick and the ads are for products I usually would buy. It’s never the end of the world.
It’s one of the few times I actually watch ads on large screens.
Research agrees. ThinkTV (though slightly compromised in their independence) wrote an article in 2019 on this very topic.
Advertising during sport isn’t just right, it’s very effective.
That brings me to the current Kayo dilemma. In Kayo, there’s often just a holding pattern on the screen. “We’re in an ad break. We’ll be right back.”
Does that mean they don’t have ads to show? Seriously? Have advertisers gone mad?
Last I checked, Kayo has some 1m subscribers. I’m willing to bet maybe 200,000 at least must be NRL fans. That should equal $4,000 per spot… at least. Maybe more. Yet Kayo seems like it’s unable to fill that demand.
What gives?
There are only three answers that make sense to me.
Firstly, maybe Kayo isn’t selling the ad space well. Streaming systems are new. I’m betting the delivery mechanisms there are inevitable stuff ups in how ads are put on the screen. But if that’s the case, I’d be making it a priority at Kayo to sort that problem out.
Secondly, it could be that ad buyers aren’t buying Kayo inventory. If that’s the case I’d genuinely question the logic here. All that would point to is advertisers being unaware of the value of BVOD assets these days (hint: if you’re in the marketing investment analytics game, you know that BVOD is high value and low on inventory stock). If that’s the case, you need better analytics!
Thirdly, it could be because Kayo doesn’t want to sell the ad space for some reason. I’d be baffled as to why that was, but a potential answer could be a price floor. Kayo simply isn’t willing to devalue the space and set a precedent, and hence no ad is better than an ad.
I don’t know what the answer is (someone, please, from Foxtel put me out of my misery). But I’d love to know.
It remains the greatest mystery of my days in advertising.
Henry Innis, co-founder at Mutiny
Well, I think more brands should be on Kayo then! Thanks for the response, I think it’s a testament to you guys that you’re capping for UX purposes. That’s customer centricity right there.
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Glad you’re enjoying your Kayo subscription Henry.
We’re really proud of how fantastic the user experience is. The way our platform is set up is that we run the same advertising experience as our Broadcast feed with Digital only ads inserted inserted over the linear feed, which is partly the reason you’re seeing those pesky holding pages.
Rather than just have a free for all, we adhere to strict frequency caps – so we don’t run back-to-back ads like other BVOD platforms. We cap category and advertisers within ad pods, all to make sure that our subscribers have the best viewing experience possible and that the ads that are run are more engaging and effective for brands.
I can understand your frustration as a media professional – we often have to hold ourselves back and remind ourselves that Kayo is a premium Live sports platform – both in terms of the content, and the advertising environment. We don’t compromise on this. We’d rather serve you a holding page than a frustrating ad experience.
Please be patient with us as we increase our advertiser volume, part of the challenge is keeping up with the exponential growth of Kayo over the past year. We’re currently delivering 28.5% of total BVOD minutes on a monthly basis with our subscribers watching 8+ hours of sport weekly. As we continue adding more advertisers to the platform, you (and other viewers) will be seeing fewer instances of holding pages, and more awesome ads.
Always happy to chat to you directly if you want to learn more about advertising on Kayo – just buzz me on LinkedIn if you’d like to connect.
I’m not sure what’s worse, we’re in an ad break or seeing the same ad 3 times in a row. What I’ve noticed though is that ads in the same stream can differ by device. I’ve had the same kayo stream playing simultaneously live on a shield and a Chromecast google tv and it showed different ads in the same break
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