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Live Events in Kokai: Win high-impact moments with smarter decisioning

Streaming interface displayed on a TV showcasing three live events: a stage performance with curtains and a spotlighted microphone, a sports event, and an award show.

Live events command attention — and the brands that win are the ones ready to act in real time. As audiences surge around live sports and cultural moments, smarter decisioning in The Trade Desk platform turns unpredictable spikes into precision-timed victories for advertisers.

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From sports broadcasts to awards shows, live events represent some of the most sought-after inventory in advertising. These moments draw large audiences and concentrate attention in ways that always-on programming cannot. 

Viewership can surge and dip in real time, demand can spike unpredictably, and schedules can shift quickly. As more live events move to digital, their scale continues to expand. Live sports viewership alone is projected to reach 133 million viewers by 2028,1 intensifying competition across increasingly fragmented platforms. 

Live Events in Kokai offers a suite of new features designed specifically for buying live sports and other tentpole programming. Built for high-traffic, real-time environments, it streamlines discovery, targeting, and pacing so advertisers can capture attention when it peaks. 

Get to know Live Events in Kokai 

Real-time broadcasts demand a buying approach designed for unpredictability. 

Live Events in Kokai helps buyers: 

  • Harness peak impressions 

  • Optimize media spend during demand spikes 

  • Avoid being locked into inflexible direct deals that limit cost-effective budget shifts 

  • Manage fluctuating campaigns manually 

  • Gain clear visibility into available live inventory 

Kokai streamlines activation for live events while maintaining precision and control through five key features: 

  1. Comprehensive catalog: Easily browse and search for upcoming live events in one view, simplifying discovery and activation. 

  2. Simplified category-level targeting: Target at the sport or league level to include our entire catalog of publishers, removing the need for manual curation. 

  3. Automated budgeting across a season: Activate across a season with a single flight and automatic daily caps, eliminating the need for granular flighting and manual budget adjustments. 

  4. Smarter pacing for high-concurrency moments: Capture more impressions during peak engagement with our pacing system that reacts instantly to attention spikes, helping you maximize impact while staying within budget. 

  5. Predictive forecasting: Access predicted CPMs and dynamic range guidance to stay competitive and confidently forecast spend, reach, and impressions pre-flight. 

Live events in practice

In an internal head-to-head test, live event pacing delivered:

%
more bids
%
of budget spent 2

From preseason forecasting to in-flight reporting, buyers gain the intelligence needed to optimize performance across the season. 

Unlike traditional workflows, Kokai ensures buyers can capture attention before it passes. 

Media buying benefits 

Traders using Kokai for live sports activation have seen meaningful performance improvements: 

  • Old Navy reduced cost per unique household by 70% when using decisioned buying compared to programmatic guaranteed deals, increasing the efficiency of household reach during live sports activation.3 

  • Hyatt increased its booking rate by 335%, demonstrating how live event activation drives meaningful downstream conversion outcomes.4 

  • A leading brand working with Happy Cog achieved a 366% increase in return on ad spend during football season alone.5 

  • Best Western Hotels & Resorts reached more than 2.3 million households through live sports activation, achieving 89% incremental reach beyond linear TV by leveraging multiple private marketplaces across different sports-related content.6 

Live events can deliver both reach and measurable performance, especially when combined with the precision and flexibility of programmatic. 

Best practices for activation

To set your campaigns up for success, follow these recommendations when activating live sports in Kokai:

Before activating, run a live sports forecast to estimate the expected impression volume for each publisher carrying the event or season. 

This helps to ensure your budget matches realistic delivery expectations, avoids underfunding when demand is at its highest, and highlights which publishers are most likely to drive unique reach, helping prioritize spend effectively. 

Live events are competitive, and many publishers set higher floors during marquee matchups or playoff runs. 

To remain competitive in the auction and avoid losing high-value impressions, set base bids in line with suggested CPMs. This enables dynamic bid adjustments during peak attention moments, such as game-changing plays, so your ads win when viewers are most engaged. 

For full-season activations or large-scale sports, apply more precise audience, geo, and device targeting while maintaining scale. 

For shorter or tightly timed events, avoid stacking niche segments, restrictive geos, or device constraints that may limit available inventory. In these cases, broader targeting gives Kokai more decisioning power to maximize impression wins across publishers and available live inventory. 

Creative approval delays are one of the most common causes of missed impressions in live events. 

Submit creative early and confirm publisher approval before the event window opens. Launch campaigns at least one hour before the start of a game so Kokai can build momentum as live viewership spikes. 

Smarter buying for live inventory 

Live Events in Kokai simplifies decisioned buying with a seamless, efficient workflow built for real-time environments. Buyers gain simplicity, flexibility, and performance, so they never miss the high-impact moments that matter most. 

Ready to bring smarter decisioning to your next live event? Contact your account manager today or click below for a step-by-step activation guide.

Learn how to target live events

Live event targeting is managed in the Inventory Selection (Is) tile within Kokai. With our step-by-step activation guide, you can start targeting and pacing your campaigns for live events. 
Requires platform login to access. 

View Guide

Sources: 
1. EMarketer, “Agencies grow AI, sports, and experiential via acquisition,” July 2025. 
2. Live Events in Kokai One Sheet 
3. “Old Navy drives incremental reach by 20% with live sports testing” 
4. “Leading restaurant chain delivers 366% ROAS during football season with CTV live sports streaming” 
5. “Hyatt boosts average booking rate by 335% with CTV live sports” 
6. Best Western Hotels & Resorts drives 89% incremental reach with live sports”