Sky Media has announced plans to launch Smart Sponsorships in the second half of 2022. Powered by Sky’s AdSmart addressable technology, Smart Sponsorships will enable brands to tailor their idents to different audiences using Sky’s third-party data or advertisers’ own first-party customer data. Sky said that Smart Sponsorship also opens up the possibility of more local and geographic creative executions and opportunities – meaning programme or channel alignment can be bought for specific locations such as country, county, city, local authority area, down to postcode area.

Smart sponsorships will seamlessly swap out a more relevant creative message depending on which household is watching. This means a car brand could change the car model featured depending on the affluence or life-stage of the household, or change the scenery and voice over depending on location. Using their own data, advertisers could also deliver different creative to current and lapsed customers.

Sky said it believes Smart Sponsorships will likely benefit from the same uplifts in relevance that Adsmart has seen. On average, across thousands of AdSmart campaigns, advertisers have seen a 48 per cent reduction in tune-away, 35 per cent increase in engagement and 10 per cent increase in spontaneous recall when using addressable technology.

“AdSmart pioneered the use of TV addressability and that same technology will help do the same for sponsorships,” said Dev Sangani, Advertising Capability and Strategy Director at Sky Media. “With rich data, exciting creative possibilities and trusted & engaging content, this latest innovation in our exciting roadmap will help brands create even more effective partnerships with our shows and channels.”