advertising

Ad impressions delivered by connected TV grew by 55% in the third quarter compared to the prior year, according to ad and analytics company Innovid. In its fall 2020 U.S. Video Benchmarks Report, Innovid said the CTV’s share of video ad impressions jumped to 41% in the quarter from 33% a year ago.

A political windfall benefited station groups after COVID’s ravages, and there’s every reason to see political remaining healthy for many cycles to come. The reason? Leading local newscasts still have a close and coveted relationship with their loyal viewers.

Viamedia, the large, independent ad sales management company for local cable, OTT, streaming and video, is seeing a 200% increase in political revenue when it comes to its average revenue per subscriber versus that of 2016.

After several years of price declines for broadcast TV’s biggest shows, advertisers paid substantial increases for 30 seconds of airtime in many returning series in the 2020-21 season, according to Ad Age’s annual survey of media agencies. Of 80 returning series on the big four broadcast networks and The CW tracked by Ad Age, 38 saw the cost for a 30-second commercial increase and another 22 were flat compared with last year. Only 21 saw their price decrease.

The NFL tells Adweek it is “exploring” having a Super Bowl with around 20% capacity at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.

Biden’s campaign will spend $51 million on television and digital advertising over the final week of the preelection sprint, according to data maintained by the nonpartisan firm Advertising Analytics. Outside groups are set to spend another $36 million on his behalf. Trump’s campaign has blocked off about half that amount.

Believing it’s never too early to start thinking about the upfront, Fox has launched an ad campaign aimed at media buyers and brand managers, and a web portal where clients can get information about upcoming schedules and programming. The campaign uses the theme “The Power Of Fox Is The Power To Break Through’” and informs clients that they can buy the company’s four verticals — entertainment, sports, news and the Tubi streaming services — or buy the entire portfolio.

The U.S. advertising market trimmed its declines in the third quarter from the second quarter — down 5% year-over-year, according to Standard Media Index. The U.S. had seen a steep 32% drop in the second quarter due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stronger results for the U.S. can be attributed to the increase in ad revenue from NBA and NHL sports TV programming rescheduled to the July-October period from the spring-season period. Digital advertising posted an 8% gain in the quarter.

Total national TV entertainment advertising sank 25% in September to $2.0 billion — mostly due to the lack of TV network primetime programming for the new TV season, according to MediaRadar. Major TV networks experienced massive TV production delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which in turn has pushed out many new TV shows and content launches for the 2020-21 TV season to start in November or later.

Philippe Krakowsky will take over next year as CEO of New York ad giant Interpublic Group, the latest of the world’s big marketing-services conglomerates to enact a succession plan as the industry grapples with seismic changes in the way its business is conducted.

The U.S. ad economy grew 2.7% in September, marking its second consecutive month of expansion since the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic sent it into decline in March. While the rate of expansion fell by half from August’s 5.9% growth, it nonetheless indicates sustained growth for the U.S. ad economy and affirms industry forecaster projections that the ad recession would bottom out during the second quarter and that ad spending would once again begin to expand in the third quarter.

COVID-19 accelerated long-term viewership changes and channeled ever-higher numbers toward streaming and toward leaner cable packages, but broadcast remains a reliable and flexible buy for advertisers.

Comcast’s ad tech company FreeWheel, said agencies spent a record $1.26 billion using the  automated ePort platform to buy ads from local stations and rep firms during September. The total smashed the previous record of $936 million set in December 2019.

Wall Street analysts have turned extra bullish on digital media — especially social and connected TV (CTV) and streaming services — according to reports from equity research firms assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Depending on who is doing the talking, TV’s 2020 “upfront” market was absolutely horrendous or merely awful. Advance advertising commitments for the next year of TV could be down as much as 15% to 20%, according to six media executives and ad buyers familiar with parts of the industry’s annual negotiations for commercial support for its next programming cycle.

Television news networks will benefit from a U.S. presidential race that may not be decided on election night. At least two networks, Fox News Channel and NBC, are expecting or already seeing high demand for the week following election night. Fox News is also offering its major sponsors the option to extend their campaigns if election results are not in after that first week.

The total drop is pegged to lower political advertising, while the increase in core looks to come from growing sports gambling, improved auto and solid business from categories like legal and home improvement. That’s the consensus of station groups and industry watchers surveyed annually by TVNewsCheck.

Walt Disney Co. has sold TrueX Inc., an advertising-technology company it absorbed as part of its $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets in 2019, to Gimbal, a company that provides location-based technology and ad services. Financial terms of the deal weren’t announced. Gimbal, the customer-facing name of PaeDae Inc., paid less than $100 million for TrueX, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The debates may give advertisers of all stripes something they have not had in some time — a massive TV audience tuning in to an event that is not related to sports. NBC, CBS and ABC have all sold out their commercial inventory around the first debate on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the matter — as has Fox News Channel.

In a world where we are all programmers with thousands of hours or shows available on demand with just a few clicks of our remotes, there is nothing quite like the power of a shared live TV moment. Whether it’s live footage from hurricanes, or protests or sports bubbles, it’s hard to forget those images that cause you to call or text a friend saying, “You have to put this on right now.”

Procter & Gamble, which spends millions to call attention to high-profile products like Crest, Tide and Pampers, said today it will negotiate directly with media outlets going forward — a move that is likely to take it out of typical “upfront” discussions that involve letting media-buying agencies utilize its ad spend for leverage in these annual talks between marketers and U.S. TV companies.

The U.S. advertising marketplace grew 5.9% in August — its first monthly year-over-year expansion since March, when the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on many forms of ad spending. The finding, based on a MediaPost analysis of Standard Media Index’s U.S. Ad Market Tracker, represents actual media-buying processed by the major ad agencies and brands, and may not be as representative of the long-tail marketplace of smaller advertisers and agencies.

Monthly U.S. ad spending pacing has improved consistently since the ad recession began earlier this year following the U.S. pandemic lockdown, but there was a slightly negative blip in August, according to a tracking study of ad executives’ “run rates,” compiled by Wall Street equity research firm Pivotal Research Group.

Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit said it is introducing a new measurement system that tells marketers how effective their ad spending has been across campaigns, screens and platforms. Honda is engaged in a beta test of NBCU’s Total Investment Impact, which evaluates total media investment across NBCU properties and takes into account relevant internal and external factors that can impact the performance of media.

AT&T is considering offering wireless phone plans partially subsidized by advertising as soon as a year from now, CEO John Stankey said in an interview on Tuesday. “I believe there’s a segment of our customer base where given a choice, they would take some load of advertising for a $5 or $10 reduction in their mobile bill,” Stankey said.

Comcast Corp. says the U.S. Supreme Court should step in and shut down a monopolization lawsuit over the TV ad placement market, arguing a federal appeals court improperly gave a green light to claims it illegally refused to do business with rival Viamedia Inc.

More encouraging news that ad demand is rebounding from its recent recession is coming out of GroupM’s Business Intelligence team. “Global advertising is improving,” GroupM Business Intelligence Global President Brian Wieser writes in an update, adding that ad spending is “even going positive in some markets.”

CBS and ABC suffered lower primetime scatter pricing in the spring and summer 2020 periods due to the cancellation or postponement of major sports events as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both networks see typically higher pricing levels during those periods.

Bob Bakish, president and CEO of ViacomCBS, says the upfront advertising market is going well, although he offered few details. “On the upfront, things are very, very far along,” said Bakish, speaking at a Bank of America virtual media conference on Wednesday. “We always thought it would take longer and it did.”

David Cohen has been named CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents digital media, effective Sept. 15. Cohen joined the IAB as president in March. He had been a top media buyer, most recently as president of Magna.

On a conference call with reporters Tuesday, CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus said that NFL ad sales at this point are “pacing at the exact level we paced at last year, and last year was an incredibly successful year for us.”