The live video supply chain and the programmatic advertising ecosystem have operated in parallel for too long — one optimizing for signal reliability, the other for audience monetization. That gap is now a liability.
As live sports, news, and events migrate from linear to IP-delivered streams, the infrastructure carrying those signals is generating data that the buy side has never had access to: authenticated device identity, broadcaster-declared content metadata, stream-level quality signals, and verified traffic provenance. Yet none of this reaches a DSP. None of it informs a bid. And none of it can — because distribution and ad tech don't speak the same language, or each other's protocols.
Advertisers overpay to reach audiences they can't verify on inventory they can't trust, while broadcasters leave premium CPMs on the table because they lack the tooling to prove their supply is clean.
The convergence opportunity is real. Authenticated stream-level data validated at the distribution layer — before it ever reaches an SSP — creates a new class of inventory: broadcaster-declared, IVT-resistant, and structurally differentiated from the open web. This isn't a targeting play. It's a trust infrastructure play.
This panel brings together voices from broadcast delivery, programmatic infrastructure, and buy-side strategy to ask: what does it actually take to close the loop between the pipe and the bid?