At the start of the season in September, the NFL witnessed lower pricing for individual TV commercials in the scatter TV marketplace, according to media cost research and analysis company SQAD. But overall TV revenue is still higher, according to a separate estimate.
At about the time big agencies and advertisers were wrapping up their upfront ad deals for the 2016-17 season, near-term demand for national TV advertising time was inching up, according to the most recent monthly data from the RealCost Index, a collaboration of MediaPost and SQAD indexing the average cost of national TV advertising time.
National TV ad prices fell slightly coming into the new year after ending 2015 on a down note. Prices fell one point to an index of 126 in January, continuing a downward trend that began when December 2015 crashed 17 points from an index of 144 in November 2015, according to the Real Cost Index, a collaboration of MediaPost and SQAD enabling readers to track the supply and demand of national TV advertising time based on cost indexing.
Network scatter CPMs reflected markedly steeper increases from the 2013 first quarter to the 2013 second quarter, as the average daypart costs rose 32% for adults 25-54, while spot TV CPMs increased only 10% over the same period, according to TVB analysis of SQAD data.
