Like the Super Bowl, adver­tis­ing dur­ing the Oscars is expen­sive, but can expose a brand to a large audi­ence. It also gives mar­keters an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with an audi­ence far beyond the tele­cast. But, unlike the Super Bowl, view­ers don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly tune in to awards shows for the com­mer­cials. And live awards con­tent can be far more unpre­dictable. So how do mar­keters forge mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions with this live, engaged audi­ence in the moment?

Per Think with Google, 43 mil­lion view­ers tuned in to the Oscars last year. Fur­ther, tens of mil­lions of Oscar-relat­ed Google search­es and tons of relat­ed YouTube con­tent mean there are many oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to par­tic­i­pate in award events like Sunday’s tele­cast of the 87th Acad­e­my Awards.

In addi­tion, Think with Google notes there are many more Oscar-relat­ed search­es on YouTube and Google the day after an awards show and, fur­ther, videos about award shows are watched for months after­ward.

“The Oscars in par­tic­u­lar has a long shelf life, with inter­est pick­ing back up in the fall,” accord­ing to Think with Google.

In oth­er words, mar­keters have a huge win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to cap­i­tal­ize on award shows and serve up rel­e­vant con­tent to con­tin­ue to con­nect with con­sumers – even long after the event itself. Already, some brands have giv­en us a pre­view of their Oscar plans.

Accord­ing to Matthew Clyde, chief strate­gist and pres­i­dent at inter­ac­tive agency Ideas Col­lide, live event pro­gram­ming like the Oscars or even the recent 40th anniver­sary SNL spe­cial help adver­tis­ers get more audi­ence share and atten­tion because there’s a live, engaged audi­ence that is actu­al­ly pay­ing atten­tion as opposed to more pre­dictable sched­uled pro­gram­ming that is con­sum­able on mobile devices and on demand.

This also means brands that tie in a social com­po­nent can fur­ther lever­age their reach and share, he said.

How­ev­er, chal­lenges clear­ly remain, such as mak­ing the con­tent and relat­ed con­sumer inter­ac­tion authen­tic.

Here’s a look at four spe­cif­ic moments mar­keters have dur­ing awards shows and ways brands can seize them.

1. The Product Placement Moment

Clyde points to the Pharrell/Arby’s moment at the 2014 Gram­mys with the hat and the “very organ­ic moment that became such a big sen­sa­tion.”

“This year, how­ev­er, every­one was try­ing to repli­cate that too much,” Clyde said. “It requires authen­tic­i­ty and smart, engaged mar­keters to know what the audi­ence is going to see through. I think that’s the chal­lenge of the mar­ket­ing engine…there’s always now a con­stant con­tent machine to feed and live events require mar­keters to be more on their toes than before.”

He points to hotel brand Hilton, which has been a long­time Gram­mys spon­sor and tweet­ed to Phar­rell about his bell­boy out­fit dur­ing the Gram­mys this year.

“I’m curi­ous – was that strate­gi­cal­ly placed or luck that Hilton was a pro­mo­tion­al spon­sor of the Gram­mys and he wore that out­fit?” Clyde said. “It’s like the Sam­sung thing [at the 2014 Oscars], too…product place­ment is more and more some­thing major brands are hav­ing a think about. ‘What can we do to keep that live enter­tain­ment user talk­ing and express­ing more about our brands?’”

2. The Real-Time Moment

In fact, Clyde said brands and mar­keters now have to behave much more like live broad­cast­ers of yore and pro­duce in the moment.

“Gone are the days of cre­at­ing cam­paigns over eight weeks and then launch­ing,” Clyde said. “You also have to cre­ate con­tent and visu­als in the moment live as it is hap­pen­ing, like a broad­cast­er would be doing.”

Oreo’s Super Bowl tweet is a great exam­ple, but, again, the chal­lenge is to find a nat­ur­al fit, oth­er­wise it’s just an inter­rup­tion, Clyde said.

3. The Ready-for-Anything Moment

Anoth­er chal­lenge is that the Oscars and oth­er awards shows are “a lit­tle more of a wild card in terms of an event like a Super Bowl” because they “depend on the host or the movies up for nom­i­na­tion and actors pop­u­lar at the time,” said Sarah Neal Simp­son, asso­ciate direc­tor of mobile and social plat­forms at adver­tis­ing agency R/GA.

Anoth­er bar­ri­er awards show adver­tis­ers face: “you nev­er real­ly have con­fir­ma­tion of what some­one is going to wear [at an awards show] until the sec­ond before they step out,” Simp­son said. “It’s hard to be real time…and it’s hard to plan for these things” when try­ing to also cre­ate con­text around celebri­ties and moments.

4. The Making-High-Glamour-Relatable Moment

Anoth­er obsta­cle for mar­keters is tak­ing a high­ly glam­orous awards show moment and mak­ing it rel­e­vant to an exist­ing audi­ence and poten­tial con­sumers watch­ing at home, Simp­son said.

“I think what we’re see­ing more and more of…in gen­er­al, brands are try­ing to fig­ure out how to make local invite-only real-time events rel­e­vant to the audi­ence and speak to their brand mes­sag­ing because I think tra­di­tion­al PR is fluc­tu­at­ing with social media,” Simp­son said.

For exam­ple, L’Oreal used an acti­va­tion tied to the Gold­en Globes to bring looks to women at home on Tum­blr and Insta­gram with the help of influ­encers.

Brands are also embrac­ing plat­forms and the ver­nac­u­lar on plat­forms – or more con­sumer-cen­tric lan­guage to be more relat­able as Sam­sung did with its self­ie last year to “get in on that trend and be more cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant,” Simp­son said.