No industry needs to leverage real-time marketing quite like sports, an industry where unpredictable events can happen at a moment's notice. Their fans are always connected and engaged, whether they are sharing their reactions to key game moments on social media or checking on their fantasy team ranking.

After a serial killer used Facebook Live to broadcast his confession, having used their video platform to share footage of himself murdering an elderly man, many marketers were left asking: Do we really want to be on the live bandwagon right now?

When the defending NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers signed a deal with Goodyear last week to have the company's Wingfoot logo on Cavs' jerseys beginning next season, it raised a lot of eyebrows and upped the ante on advertising in pro sports.

For anyone tuning in to an NBA game during the playoffs this year, the endless stream of three-point attempts being launched is ample evidence of how the use of analytics has revolutionized the game over the last few years. Less obvious, but just as impactful, is the role big data has had in behind the scenes efforts of sports franchises. Filling millions of empty seats takes a huge amount of audience data, as well as a deeper understanding of consumer mindset, and sports teams are extremely aggressive in adapting new technologies in an effort to both better understand and more ...

One hundred audience-facing jobs weren't the only things lost, with the recent bloodletting at "The Worldwide Leader." We've heard for years in other verticals, that marketing to "the segment of one" is a fast approaching reality.

This Memorial Day weekend, if your eyes can keep up, you'll see more logos flying across your television screen than, perhaps, during any other weekend on the calendar. That's because all told among the Indianapolis 500, NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600 and the Monaco F1 Grand Prix - 95 or so racers with their vehicles covered in logos - will log more than 43,000 miles in high-octane competitive motorsports action.

There are countless stories about pro athletes who cannot handle life as productively when they leave the playing stage as when they were in the spotlight. Shawne Merriman is not one of those stories.

Longtime followers of this post know that when it comes to baseball, I'm kind of like the old Sy Sperling, Hair Club for Men commercials, where he implored, "I'm not just the hair club president, I'm also a client."

Now that the dust has settled on the Raiders' move to Las Vegas and the gold glimmer has worn off a bit, one thing is clear about the relocation - the short-term consequences are bad for everyone.