DeepIntent this week announced a suite of live sports and events advertising capabilities for healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, marking what the New York-based demand-side platform describes as an industry first: the ability to target verified, premium live streaming TV inventory at scale while measuring outcomes in terms specific to the pharmaceutical industry.
The announcement, made June 9, 2026, arrives at a moment when live sports viewership has migrated decisively toward streaming platforms – but the infrastructure to reach those viewers with precise, compliant healthcare advertising has lagged well behind. According to DeepIntent, 96 of the 100 most-watched telecasts in the United States in 2025 featured live sports. That concentration of viewership in live programming, combined with its accelerating shift toward connected TV apps, forms the market context for the product launch.
A gap in the live CTV market
Most major demand-side platforms have added live CTV features as streaming audiences expanded over the past two years. The problem, according to DeepIntent, is structural rather than superficial. Live events inventory is routinely mixed with other inventory types in the bidstream, making it difficult for any advertiser – and particularly difficult for pharmaceutical advertisers with strict compliance and measurement requirements – to verify that a campaign is actually running against live moments rather than on-demand replays or adjacent content.
For healthcare brands, that ambiguity carries real cost. Pharmaceutical advertising operates under regulatory frameworks that demand precision in targeting and transparency in measurement. Broad inventory bundles that include live signals without verification offer reach without confidence. DeepIntent's argument is that confidence, not just reach, is the missing piece.
Live CTV has attracted considerable infrastructure investment across the industry. Magnite launched its Live Scheduler tool in…