Genius Sports Limited released new biometric research conducted with MediaScience showing that ads delivered immediately after emotionally heightened moments in live sports can double unaided brand recall.
The study, The Live Moment Effect, finds that advertising effectiveness is significantly influenced by a viewer’s emotional state immediately before an ad is shown. In controlled biometric testing, ads shown after high-intensity sporting moments, such as near-scoring plays or crucial momentum shifts, delivered approximately double the unaided brand recall of baseline conditions.
The Moment Before the Ad Matters
The research challenges long-held assumptions about media value, showing that not all impressions are equal.
Live sports remain one of the last entertainment formats with large-scale audiences. According to Sports Business Journal, sports accounted for 96 of the top 100 most-watched U.S. telecasts of 2025. But scale alone does not make every impression equally valuable. Fans’ attention rises and falls with the action, making the moments immediately after high-intensity plays especially powerful for advertisers. Cutting through requires knowing when those moments occur and being ready to reach the right fans in real time with messaging tailored to the moment.
Key findings include:
• Emotional intensity immediately before an ad significantly increases memory encoding and recall
• The 60 seconds following a high-impact moment represent the peak window for advertising effectiveness
• Emotional context can have a greater influence on recall than the ad creative itself in real time.
• A Shift from Buying Media to Activating Moments
The findings point to a fundamental shift in how sports media should be planned and valued.
The Live Moment Effect research shows that recall is concentrated around moments of peak emotion. As a result, aligning ad delivery and ad messaging with real-time game context can significantly improve campaign outcomes.
Genius Sports is applying these insights through the Genius Sports Moment Engine, which uses official game data and real-time signals to identify and activate around high-impact moments as they occur. By enabling brands to align campaigns with peak attention windows, the Genius Sports Moment Engine allows advertisers to improve outcomes by optimizing timing rather than increasing volume.
“The sports advertising playbook is being rewritten around the moments when fans are most emotionally engaged. Brands should be present across the full fan journey — pre-game, in-game and post-game — because every stage of the sports experience creates an opportunity to connect. Within that always-on presence, this research shows that certain moments carry extra impact. When a momentum shift, near score or decisive play changes how fans are feeling and focusing, the message should change with it. Genius Sports Moment Engine uses official game data and real-time signals to help advertisers identify those high-impact windows as they happen and tailor campaigns accordingly across every screen,” said Josh Linforth, Chief Revenue Officer at Genius Sports.
“Our research continues to reinforce a principle we’ve observed across the media landscape: context matters. In live sports, emotionally heightened moments prime audiences differently, changing their cognitive and emotional state before an ad is even delivered. When an advertisement aligns with that moment, the context and the creative converge to strengthen memory encoding and significantly amplify recall. That creates a meaningful opportunity for brands to improve performance through real-time, moment-based activation rather than simply increasing media volume,” said Phillip Lomax, Chief Revenue Officer at MediaScience.
The research analyzed viewer response to advertising across varying levels of emotional intensity during live sports, measuring attention, cognitive engagement, and brand recall in controlled environments.
