What you need to know:

• SBS now at 10.24m audience log ins, though circa 2m active per month.
• It will activate Adobe CDP this year and aim to compete with commercial network rivals on first party data-driven advertising, audience matching and attribution.
• Sales director Adam Sadler suggests "best ever content slate" wrapping up with Fifa World Cup in November will deliver significant boost to active audience IDs.
• Sadler said SBS BVOD ad revenues tracking "at share" following "significant" revenue increases.

Smarts before soccer

SBS is planning to ramp up first party data-powered advertising with a customer data platform (CDP) launch ahead of the Fifa World Cup.

Meanwhile sales boss Adam Sadler told Mi3 advertisers are starting to walk the talk on diversity in media investment, as flagged this week by GroupM boss Aimee Buchanan: “We’ve seen a significant increase over the last 12 months in terms of client interest and questions [in audience diversity] – and a significant shift upwards in revenue.”

He thinks the network’s 27 per cent BVOD audience share and “better audience experience” due to lower ad loads – five minutes per hour versus 15 minutes on non-subsidised commercial networks – plus investment in first party data capability will drive further commercial growth.

SBS has now amassed a total of 10.24m user log-ins for its BVOD service, which among ad-funded networks puts it behind Seven, which said it will hit 12m this week, and Nine – although Nine’s claims of around 14m IDs also include log-in data across its broader non-BVOD digital estate.

Sadler admits SBS’ monthly active users are lower, ranging from 1.8 million to 2.1 million. But he thinks that level of log-ins already means "advertisers can target at scale" while its “best ever content slate” running through to exclusivity on the Fifa World Cup in November “will help us reactivate many of those 10m-plus users”.

There’s precedent. Sports last year helped power Seven to millions of additional first party data sets with an Olympics boost of circa 2.5m IDs.

Advertisers can currently create audience segments based on interests, demographics and postcode via second party data partnerships with TEG Analytics, Experian and Smrtr.

Sadler thinks implementing an Adobe CDP will enable advertisers to better target across all devices while facilitating audience matching – and ultimately suppression and attribution from ad to action.

While SBS does not break out its BVOD revenues, Sadler claimed it was tracking “at share”. The network claimed in its upfront presentations this week it commands 27 per cent VPM share, that is, the number of streaming minutes captured by OzTam’s Video Player Measurement system.