While August may be synonymous with the end of the summer season, it also signals the beginning of another: Football season. For advertisers, this means gearing up to make the most of captive audiences—and finding new and impactful ways of getting in front of football enthusiasts while being mindful of budgets.
With an average viewership of around 17.8 million for the regular NFL season and 22.1 million during college playoffs in 2025, football content is among the most competitive inventory in media. However, advertising on live games doesn’t have to exhaust your media budget. With Cadent, advertisers can access premium live sports inventory—on TV or streaming—without massive upfront commitments, match requirements, or exclusivity clauses. When combined with football-related content surrounding the games, brands can extend reach and maximize engagement.
Football is more than just a series of games; it’s a cultural tentpole full of smaller moments—moments that offer opportunities for connection between brands and consumers. Consider how people come together around the love of the sport with fantasy football leagues, sports talk shows, and tailgating, for example. These are moments in which fans are engaged, excited, and attentive.
For advertisers, this means rethinking when and where messages are delivered. Brands can show up where attention is high, but competition is lower—and where messaging can feel more relevant and personal. When brands activate on live games and the moments surrounding them, they can create deeper connections with fans—capturing attention at the coin toss and beyond.
Whether activating during primetime moments or in the quieter buildup, advertisers can use Cadent’s Predictive Intelligence to identify the most opportune moments and audiences—maximizing outcomes across the entire football season. This technology enables measurable connected media strategies across digital and linear channels, reducing waste and maximizing media investment while driving tangible, real-world results. With Cadent’s Predictive Intelligence, advertisers can go beyond the view, focusing media investments on outcomes, such as sales lift and visitation.
Imagine a sporting goods store, Lakeside Sports, opens several new locations in Detroit, Michigan. The company’s marketing team aims to increase awareness and drive in-store traffic to its new locations among sports enthusiasts in the Detroit area. To achieve this, Lakeside Sports partners with Cadent to promote the new locations and merchandise throughout the football season.
Lakeside’s media plan leads with placements during live college football and NFL games, capitalizing on high viewership and fan engagement, reaching audiences on whichever screen they’re most engaged. But the strategy doesn’t stop there. To maximize reach and stay top of mind throughout the season, Lakeside also activates NFL-related and football-adjacent content.
Lakeside Sports works with Cadent to build an omnichannel strategy that reaches and engages audiences. Together, Cadent and Lakeside Sports use custom Predictive Audiences to combine Lakeside’s first-party data with other consumer data attributes, such as zip codes, household income, and visitation to local stadiums, along with linear TV and CTV sports viewership signals to create a robust audience segment. With Predictive Intelligence serving impressions only to those most likely to take action, Lakeside reaches audiences across multiple touchpoints: open web display and video on sports and fitness websites, connected TV during live games and sports documentaries, and linear TV via local news and college matchups.
The brand also uses DOOH placements near local bars, college campuses, and high-traffic commuter routes during peak hours, leading up to and during Michigan Wolverines and Detroit Lions games. By doing so, Lakeside amplifies its impact, capitalizing on highly anticipated moments to remain top of mind. Moreover, Lakeside also taps into audio advertising on sports podcasts, delivering an added layer of engagement, especially for those tuning in to stay up to date on their favorite teams.
Lakeside Sports utilizes these channels to not only drive awareness of its store locations but also to increase in-store traffic and purchases through interactive rich media units, such as shoppable ads featuring new tailgating gear, QR codes to view Lakeside’s Lions merchandise, and store locators to encourage in-store visits. Moreover, with geofencing, Lakeside Sports delivers discount codes to those within a one-mile radius of their stores, driving purchases. Additionally, Lakeside Sports partners with Cadent to retarget audiences exposed to DOOH placements, with follow-up messaging, thereby increasing relevance and personalization.
These experiences—activated during live games and football-adjacent moments—create layered touchpoints that turn attention into action.
With this approach, Lakeside Sports achieves full-funnel engagement across all screens and media types. Using Cadent’s Connected Outcomes, powered by the Cadent Viewer Graph, Lakeside Sports measures performance holistically across CTV, linear, and digital channels to understand the full campaign impact. By working with Cadent, Lakeside secures insights into channel and network performance, audience behaviors, reach and frequency, and geographic intelligence, enabling them to better understand their campaign performance and inform future strategies.
This football season, consider the total sports opportunities that exist during and around games to nurture connections between your brand and audiences. Work closely with your partners to identify where and how to reach your audience on all screens and environments, integrating your brand into fan culture. With this approach, you can confidently maximize media budgets, drive engagement, and foster brand affinity, all while achieving measurable outcomes.
Contact us today to discover how Cadent can help you reach your goals this football season.