STADS, an ad agency specialising in sports, has gone live STADS with the support of Italy football legend Alessandro Del Piero.
Through its online digital media exchange, STADS acts as a one-stop resource for the entire media buying process from creation and scheduling to optimization and final delivery – helping sports clubs to manage their advertising inventories, ad and media agencies to increase their effectiveness, and brands increase their visibility through more effective ad spends.
The company was founded in 2018 by a group of sports business and technology entrepreneurs who recognized the changing dynamics within sports advertising.
They responded with a new model based on data and analytics that delivers targeted messages to fans and supports the “destination” entertainment experiences many teams are creating inside sports venues. It also supports Real-Time Marketing (RTM) requirements, allowing advertisers to go live with a campaign at very short notice prior to the commencement of a game.
Former European Football League player Alessandro Del Piero is a strategic partner and member of the company’s advisory board who manages key stakeholder relationships and leads marketing campaigns. Del Piero, one of only five Italian players to score more than 300 career goals, is ranked on the FIFA list of the 125 greatest living players.
STADS is initially working with advertisers in Europe, the United States, Latin America and Far East to create, schedule and deliver ads to the perimeter boards immediately surrounding the playing field in European Football League venues. The company is adding basketball next, and its technology has the potential to expand to any sport worldwide and to other areas within a venue.
“We’re making stadium perimeter advertising easier and more accessible, said Yoav Shalmor, CEO at STADS. “Most advertisers don’t have the right level of accessibility to in-stadium media and often have no idea how to navigate the sports media buying process to make the best purchases.”
STADS is introducing a media optimization tool -Based on the advertisers’ segmentation requirements, the algorithm suggests the best games to reach their target audience and generates the most cost-effective package that suits their needs.
Brands can accurately target audiences by stadium, game, duration and even event time, choosing media slots based on their individual needs. For televised matches, the platform can support multiple simultaneous broadcast feeds so the in-stadium audience sees a different board display than the viewing audience in another country, adding to the media customization.
“We’re helping advertisers acquire regional exposure while removing costly barriers like yearly partnership commitments,” Shalmor added. “This model is attractive to media agencies, which previously were reluctant to lock down all of their clients’ media budgets on multi-yearly deals. They can now diversify their marketing by including sports venue media as one part of a broader campaign. They now have a platform powered by data that lets them localize their message and even advertise with different clubs simultaneously to reach a wider, diverse audience.”
This data enables STADS to know the number of fans of any club worldwide, so advertisers see that visibility goes far beyond the in-venue purchase. These fan totals are segmented based on demographics and interests, allowing advertisers to target their audience even further. STADS has also developed an innovative algorithm that aim to take some of the guesswork out of the whole process. A price algorithm enables clubs to make the most out of their inventory, by indicating the ideal price to make a sale.
“We’re removing the ’shooting in the dark‘ aspect of sports venue advertising,” said Shalmor at STADS. “STADS gives advertisers all the data they need to make the most informed decisions and lets teams partner with a wider array of brands to deliver content perfectly aligned to their audiences’ tastes and preferences.”