advertising

The recent upfronts saw networks turning on a dime from their obsession with acquiring subscribers for their streamers to their former adoration of advertising. Whether there’s enough ad revenue to support this industry-wide pivot is another story.

National TV scatter market advertising revenue is down a massive 32% so far this season — October 2021 through March 2022 — versus the same period four years ago, according to an analysis conducted by media competitive ad tracking researcher Standard Media Index. This year — similar to 2018 — includes Winter Olympics programming on NBC TV networks. And the period, like this year, starts off a big political advertising season with spending ramping up for the November elections.

Viamedia, an independent ad company serving local cable operators, said it launched its Parity Ads Platform, which simultaneously inserts regionally targeted ads on linear streams to match local commercials appearing on cable. The platform is designed to help local operators take advantage of the growth of CTV in their markets.

U.S. ad spending expanded for the 14th consecutive month in April, rising 4.3% over the same month a year ago. More significantly, April represented a 60% expansion over April 2020, which was the low point of the COVID-19-related ad recession two years ago. The data, which comes from U.S. Ad Market Tracker, a collaboration of Standard Media Index and MediaPost, also shows smaller advertisers and categories continue to lead the expansion, while the top 10 were essentially flat — rising only 0.5% over April 2021, although the group gained 48.8% over April 2020.

HBO Max and Discovery Plus, brought together when Discovery acquired WarnerMedia, are still likely to be combined, the newly combined Warner Bros. Discovery told media buyers at its inaugural upfront presentation. “In the not-too-distant future, we see a unique possibility to bring all these incredible stories and brands that shape culture, that delight, amaze and inform global consumers, and bring home these remarkable moments across all these genres, in one, awesome global streaming product,” JB Perrette, Warner Bros. Discovery’s head of global streaming, said at the upfront Wednesday.

Walt Disney Co. is taking a less-is-more approach to selling commercials on its Disney+ streaming service. Disney+ will carry about four minutes of commercials an hour on the ad-supported version of the platform set to launch later this year, company officials said.

The explosive growth of connected TV advertising has left a wave of fraud schemes in its wake, according to a new report from DoubleVerify. DoubleVerify says the number of fraud schemes it uncovered jumped by more than 70% from 2020 to 2021.

In the three years since the television industry’s biggest companies pitched their shows to advertisers in person at the upfronts, the entertainment industry has been flipped on its head.

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp talks with NBCUniversal’s Josh Feldman, CMO, and Collette Winn, VP of commercial innovation, about new ad types from the company that envelop consumers more than ever before and venture deep into the metaverse with iterations for both national and local advertisers.

The Gray NBC affiliate in Omaha, Neb., adds Greg Price as general sales manager and Laura Abel as digital sales manager.

Executives said they were aiming to introduce an ad-supported, lower-priced subscription tier in the last three months of the year, sooner than originally indicated.

From the metaverse to the Attention Lab, new ad products and formats aim to merge technology and creativity.

U.S. podcast ad revenue is estimated to grow 47% to $2.1 billion, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and consulting firm PwC. It is projected that podcast ad revenue will tack on another 45% to $3.1 billion in 2023, and 37% more to $4.2 billion by 2024.

It’s an old song, but it continues to ring true: U.S. Hispanics are underserved and oftentimes misunderstood. There are 62 million Hispanics in the U.S. with $2 trillion in purchasing power, and like other ethnic groups, they’re slowly but surely eschewing linear television for streaming video, particularly ad-supported content.

TV and radio stations had to contend with large losses during the pandemic, between the absence of political revenue and the nearly non-existent live sports and automobile categories. Then, sports betting came along, offering salvation for many broadcasters. But will state-by-state regulations and other issues hamper its promise of replenishing local broadcasters’ coffers lost during the pandemic?

Many marketers were already lukewarm on the service. Now, some may move their money elsewhere if the content moderation policies are relaxed.

How TV’s next emerging categories are shaping the future.

After a 3% increase in March, advertiser spending on national television finished the first quarter up 6%, according to new figures from Standard Media Index. The increase left the industry 0.3% ahead of where it was in the first quarter of 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to affect the U.S. Broadcast TV was up 15% in the quarter compared to 2021, helped by the Winter Olympics on NBC. Cable was up 2%. Syndication was down 14%. Cable had a 54% share of linear ad dollars, compared to broadcast’s 43% share.

The strategic partnership is designed to expand self-service buying and attribution to millions of marketers of all sizes.

E.W. Scripps’ Scripps Networks division said it will use TVision’s viewer attention data to highlight the engaged audiences of its over-the-air channels during upfront presentations. The Scripps Networks entertainment channels include Ion, Grit, Bounce Laff, TrueReal and Defy TV. TVision’s Attention to Duration Index shows that the Scripps networks average 50% higher than other linear networks for keeping its viewers in the room and engaged with ad content.

Brenda Hetrick, CRO, will move into a new role as president, and Julie Kapsch, COO, will serve as president of Matrix Sales Gateway, the newly formed subsidiary in partnership with CoxReps, Graham Media, Gray Television and Hearst Television.

The use of the QR codes in TV commercials is winning converts among local TV sales execs and their advertising clients. “We were expecting a wave and it’s almost like a tsunami,” says one local advertiser.

Netflix’s entry into the ad business could give the connected TV business a big boost. Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify, a top CTV measurement and verification company, said a Netflix with ads could grow the market for CTV ads by 30% to 50%, with Netflix attracting 40 million ad support subscribers right out of the gate.

The telecast is sold out across its three days on ESPN, ABC and the NFL Network with 30 first-time advertisers on board.

U.S. ad spending expanded for the 13th consecutive month in March, rising 5.7% over the same month a year ago. It was also the first month to show an increase over a year-ago month that also had gains. March 2021 rose 28.4% over March 2020, which was the first month of that year’s pandemic-triggered advertising recession.

To Roku, the 60th anniversary of the upfront is a good time to make streaming a more important part of advertisers’ TV budgets. “This year, our goal is to really shake up the upfronts,” Kristina Shepard, head of agency partnerships and national brand team lead for Roku, says.

While most big ad agencies have intimated plans to utilize so-called “alternative currencies” — audience measurement estimates other than Nielsen’s — as part of testing and learning about what works best in this year’s upfront advertising marketplace, Horizon Media this morning put a hard number around it: 15%. The agency said it has committed to transacting “up to 15% of its deals” in the 2022-23 upfront TV advertising marketplace using “alternate currencies.”

Veteran digital marketing executive Dennis Cook will lead all marketing for company’s digital division, with a special focus on accelerating the company’s advertising sales business.

Executives at the top streaming services, chasing ever bigger subscription numbers, are having a change of heart about commercials.

Executives from E.W. Scripps, Graham, Nexstar and Dentsu X will look at how buyers and sellers can work around the challenges to creating multimedia campaigns across linear TV, streaming, mobile and digital in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch Webinar on May 19. Register here.

Advertisers have long been nervous about interacting on the site, new management could shake it up even more.

Sinclair Broadcast Group wants advertisers to move 20% of their cable ad budgets into its free over-the-air digital networks to capture cord-cutters. In addition to its slew of TV stations, Sinclair owns Comet, Charge and TBD, collectively branded as The Stack. In its upfront pitch, Sinclair is informing buyers that those cord-cutters leaving cable aren’t just moving to streaming channels; they’re also buying antennas to watch familiar shows — soon to include Buffy the Vampire Slayer — for free on its diginets.

Dentsu International has quietly begun to integrate so-called attention metrics into both its media planning and buying systems and has begun transacting media buys based on it, the agency’s chief investment officer disclosed during an Advertising Research Foundation panel discussion on Wednesday. “Yes, we’ve tested. Yes, we’ve seen the results — but now we’re actually planning, optimizing and buying against it,” Cara Lewis said during the panel discussing the role of attention metrics during the ARF’s Audiencexscience conference.

The upstart professional football league’s April 16 season opener will see advertisers paying up to $35,000-$40,000 for a 30-second spot with some hard-sell tactics from NBC and Fox to move inventory.

Riding a hot sports market after a regular season in which ratings were up 19%, Disney Ad Sales and Turner Sports report high demand and near sellouts for the NBA playoffs, which started Tuesday night on TNT.

Effectv, the local advertising sales division of Comcast Cable, has struck a deal with Comscore, for its local TV measurement product, to be a “new form of currency” for Comcast’s local cable TV advertising deals. With the deal, Effectv will use Comscore’s audience impression-based measurement product for local advertising clients.