Sports.com Trials Ads with Live Odds

Sports.com is experimenting with a new type of banner advertisement that is updated with live odds from sporting events.

The ads first started appearing on ITV's football site, which partners with sports.com for its betting operation, and the Real Media network of sites on Friday.

Bobby Markowitz, sports.com's marketing director, said he has seen companies post odds for the day, but not a company that has changed the odds in real time as the sporting event goes on.

"We pride ourselves on trying to be a site known as a place where you can come and get live information," he said. "If you can't see a football game live on TV, you can come to our site and see it as live as possible. That's the impression we're trying to create with our advertising."

The ads were developed by sports.com's online advertising company, Tribal DDB.

The ads could appear on the sports.com site itself as early as next week, Markowitz said. Depending on the outcome of the campaign, the ads could run on other sites as well.

"Where else they might run is undecided right now," he said. "I think we'll kind of wait and see how the results come in first. It's fairly exciting."

The odds carried by the advertisements are updated as often as bookmakers can change them, Markowitz said. How fast the odds are changed depends on the type of the sport and the nature of the bet; Markowitz said he hopes the banner ads will allow odds to be updated on English football games as often as they are for American football.

The only games with updated odds featured on the banners now are English football games. If they prove successful, sports.com will use the system for betting on the Ryder Cup golf tournament, which takes place Sept. 28-30 in England.

The ultimate task of the ads is getting people to bet more, Markowitz said.

"We hope to accomplish a lot more traffic to our site in particular," he said, "and convert that into betting transactions on our betting site. If we provide people with as updated odds as possible, that's going to inspire them to make spur of the moment purchases."