advertising

Warner Bros. Discovery says it will partner with Comscore and VideoAmp for “alternative currencies” when it comes to making deals with national advertisers across its linear TV and advanced advertising inventory for this year’s upfront ad market.

Local TV sales teams can call on a business and show them a polished spec spot that takes just five minutes to make. “It’s translating into more clients and more revenue,” says Rye Addis, the general sales manager at KOAM Pittsburg, Kan.

After a slow start, Netflix’s advertising business has gained some momentum. The company’s advertising-supported service reached about 1 million monthly active users in the U.S. after its second month, according to internal data. The user base grew by more than 500% in the first month from its launch and another 50% in its second month. Netflix has also fulfilled its forecasted deliveries to advertisers, according to people familiar with the deals.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank would, at first blush, appear to have little to do with the ad industry. But Ashwini Karandikar, executive vice president of technology and data at the American Association of Advertising Agencies, believes many people are missing a key component of the story.

Through five months of the NBA season so far — with the start of playoff action looming in four weeks — national TV advertising is 28% higher to an estimated $656.9 million so far, according to iSpot.tv. Total impressions are also comparably higher — 22% more to a total of 29.8 billion — from 136,448 airings of commercials this season.

Tubi, Fox’s free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) service, will host a half-day event for advertisers on March 23 in New York City. Tubi Connect, the platform’s first conference for advertisers, appears timed to grab the attention of brands and agencies before the hectic upfronts commence — including, perhaps, touting that Tubi reached a 1% share of total monthly U.S. TV/video minutes in February, qualifying it for debuting in Nielsen’s monthly tallies.

This year’s tournament, running March 15 to April 2 and running exclusively on ESPN platforms, has 15 broadcast sponsors and nearly 100 advertisers across various categories, including Aflac, Great Clips, Intuit QuickBooks, OOFOS, Under Armour and U.S. Army.

The Fox Corp.-owned broadcast network has thrived for years on outlays from movie studios and fast-food chains, but in 2023, it’s looking to expand its relationship with something that might be more hearty. Armed with its recent launch of Studio Ramsay Global with celebrity chef and entrepreneur Gordon Ramsay, Fox is eager to court more food advertisers and marketers who are eager to woo consumers who like food experiences.

AT&T will remain a top-tier sponsor of NCAA athletic events through the 2024-2025 academic year, having signed a deal to extend its pact with the massive college-sports league. AT&T has been an NCAA “corporate champion” since 2001, and unveils the extension just as the NCAA’s 2023 “March Madness” basketball tournament is set to kick off.

Nexstar Media has spent months assembling a massive roster of TV stations; acquiring TV’s CW network; and building the NewsNation cable news network. Now comes the hard part: Getting Madison Avenue to buy ads across all of it. The nation’s largest owner of local TV outlets is ready to make its pitch to advertisers and has already scheduled a presentation for media buyers in New York for April 25. The goal, says Michael Strober, the company’s chief revenue officer, is to showcase the company’s reach among both national and local media. “We can bring local and national to our clients in ways that have never been replicated across the country,” he says.

Fewer TV advertising dollars are expected to be spent in upfront deal-making in this year versus a year ago, according to a new survey from Advertiser Perceptions. Just 49% of more than 300 U.S. marketers and agency executives in a February survey said they would be making upfront deals — down from 56% a year ago — when asked the question: “What percent of your total video advertising budget — linear TV, CTV/streaming TV and digital video — for this year will be allocated during the 2023 upfront negotiation period, and what percent will be reserved for the scatter market?”

QR codes, like the one seen during the 2023 Super Bowl in a commercial for Planters, might make a comeback and become more popular with advertisers, based on a new consumer survey that shows that consumers like them and respond to them. For Planters, the QR code generated a 70% conversion rate, which means that, when people saw the QR code and scanned them, 70% took some action when they arrived at the landing page.

March Madness is expected to rake in more than $1 billion for TV partners CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery as it plays out from March 14 until the winning team is crowned on April 3. “March Madness gives advertisers audience levels they cannot find anywhere else,” says one buyer.

Amanda Richman, U.S. CEO at GroupM’s Mindshare, has abruptly stepped down from her post, which she had held for nearly two years. No immediate explanation was given for the departure. The agency confirmed the parting of ways without further elaboration.

Fox said it hired former Nielsen executive Mainak Mazumdar as the company’s first EVP, chief advertising research and analytics officer. The addition is designed to boost Fox’s data-driven, client-first, cross-divisional advertising sales strategy, the company said. Mazumdar will report to Marianne Gambelli, president of advertising sales at Fox.

Michael Felicetti: “Like politics, all news is local. Even when there’s a big national or international news story (whether it’s Russia invading Ukraine, the World Cup or one of the biggest news moments of all time), it’s the local angles that ultimately interest us most. In fact, well over half (62%) of Americans watch local news on television daily. Even when national news seems to drown out local angles, there are still stories close to home that viewers care about: weather, sports and traffic. And for advertisers, local TV news is still a powerful way to reach a very targeted and engaged audience. On both strategic focus and practical planning levels, it provides a way to persist amid the tumult of national news cycles playing out in the background. It provides a means for sustainability.”

The new MVP program — Mission, Vision Purpose — is designed to help advertisers “really amplify what their corporate purpose is and give them time on our Fox platforms to tell their story,” according to Suzanne Sullivan, Fox executive VP of ad sales.

Sinclair Broadcast Group is rolling out new technology to squeeze more dollars out of its advertising inventory across the company. Sinclair isn’t just selling local broadcast commercials, says COO Rob Weisbord. There are 80 different ad products available among digital, streaming, national and local. In a soft advertising market, making sure all that inventory is easy for account executives to package and that it’s priced to maximize revenue is more important than ever.

As part of an ongoing commitment to “reinvest” ad budgets supporting “credible” news publishers who practice “responsible” journalism around the world, GroupM on Tuesday announced a deal using a nonprofit organization to vet the quality of local, national and international news sites for programmatic media buys. The initiative, which GroupM describes as an “industry first,” is part of its ongoing “Back to News” push, and gives GroupM clients access to vetted and high-quality ad inventory on news sites vetted by global nonprofit Internews.

The 2023 Purchase Funnel study recognizes the role of a variety of different media platforms, and confirms that television remains the most important influence by far, through all stages of the purchase decision process.

Japanese advertising and PR firm Dentsu confirmed today that it was indicted for violating Japan’s Antimonopoly Act in connection with bid rigging activities that took place during the leadup to the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Other companies were also charged including Hakuhodo, Tokyu Agency, Fuji Creative, Cerespo and Same Two.

The U.S. advertising marketplace fell for the seventh consecutive month in January, declining 5.8% from January 2022, according to the latest update from the U.S. Ad Market Tracker. The decline reflects an extra tough comparison with January 2022, which was up 23.1% over January 2021, which was the lowest January since SMI began the index.

In another indicator of the impact that weakening economics has had on the ad industry, payments to the media have grown increasingly late over the past two years, according to new data released by online ad-revenue exchange OAREX.

Ad industry groups are urging the Federal Trade Commission to reject a law professor’s request to regulate online programmatic advertising in ways that could restrict companies’ ability to serve ads to people based on their activity across sites.

Night Court, the NBC sitcom that was recently rebooted, enjoyed its heyday after its debut on NBC’s Thursday primetime schedule in 1984. But NBCUniversal is hoping the retooled comedy will lead Madison Avenue into the future. When the original program launched, built around star Harry Anderson as a non-traditional metropolitan judge, NBC sold ads against the debut broadcast of each episode as well as a rerun later in the season. Now, says Mark Marshall, the executive recently given wider oversight over NBCUniversal’s national ad sales, the company is selling broad-reach ads attached to the linear debut of each episode as well as targeted advertising that appears adjacent to the series when it streams on Peacock.

More light was shed on the sell-side push to create a so-called “JIC” that would certify multiple new advertising currencies used to buy and sell TV and premium video advertising. Speaking at the Association of National Advertisers’ media conference on Feb. 17, Group Executive Vice President Bill Tucker described it as something that would have a “different operational structure than international JICs,” which normally stands for “joint industry committee,” and then asked Video Advertising Bureau EVP Danielle DeLauro to explain what it actually is and how it differentiates from the Cross-Media Measurement platform being developed by the ANA with input from the VAB and others.

The slump in the advertising market didn’t stop Warner Bros. Discovery from selling out its inventory across the NBA’s All-Star Weekend. “We’re sold out,” Jon Diament, executive VP for ad sales at WBD, said. “This is the best year we’ve ever had.” Diament said that in addition to official league sponsors — big names long associated with the NBA like Kia, State Farm and AT&T, this year’s All-Star weekend has 20 new advertisers in the lineup.

In an advertising market update released this morning, media auditing firm Cortex Media projects the 2023 advertising marketplace likely will experience a “slowcession,” a term it made up characterizing the economy as “coming to a standstill, but never going in reverse.” In terms of media-buying implications, it is projecting the 2023-24 upfront advertising marketplace will be most impacted, declining 7% to 8% over 2022-23 volume.

AMC Networks advertising executive Evan Adlman has been chosen to oversee the company’s digital and national sales team under a new reorganization of its commercial revenue business. Adlman, who has been AMC’s senior vice president of advanced advertising and digital partnerships, will become executive vice president of commercial sales and revenue operations.

Ad-ID, a joint venture of the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, today named Nada Bradbury CEO. She had been global head of partnerships at Nielsen, where she’d spent 25 years. In her new post, she’ll report to ANA CEO Bob Lioice and 4As CEO MArla Kaplowitz. The position was last held by Harold Geller.

The good news for U.S. and worldwide advertisers is that the rate of advertising cost inflation is projected to decelerate this year, falling below the overall increase in consumer price inflation. In the U.S., the overall rate of ad-cost inflation will decline 1.7 points this year to 4.2% from 5.9% in 2022, according to new estimates released by ECI Media Management.

All the buzz about Netflix getting into the ad business prompted the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), which represents the local broadcast industry, to push back on behalf of traditional, linear TV. A recent report indicated that Netflix was telling advertisers that its Basic With Ads tier now has about 600,000 monthly active users. “Importantly, this metric refers to subscribers, not viewers and Netflix ad-supported users pale in comparison to local linear TV viewing audiences,” TVB CEO Steve Lanzano said. “The comparison is extremely meaningful for the advertising community and brands.”