Cost of an Ad
The Super Bowl investment is economically resilient, remaining relatively stable despite fluctuations in the primetime average—and rising consistently over the past five years despite a rocky economy.

Big Spenders: Automotive Makes a Comeback
2011 was the year of the auto comeback. Spending on automotive ads far surpassed other categories and more than doubled versus previous years. Nine different auto brands took center field in the commercial breaks, versus an average of two to four brands in years prior. Creative quality also improved in 2011, with an unprecedented four auto spots making Nielsen’s annual Most-Liked list. Chevrolet’s “Wild Ride” garnered the distinction of being the most watched ad of all time, with an estimated 119,628,000 viewers watching its Super Bowl airing. This year, Chevy is breaking ground again with the Game Time app, which will leverage consumers’ simultaneous cross-screen behavior and reinforce branding from traditional TV advertisements.

Top Five Super Bowl Advertising Categories (2007-2011)
Year Over Year Spend Breakdown (in millions)

Other Spend Trends

• Beer: Bud Light and Budweiser have dominated the turf when if comes to Super Bowl beer advertising over the past five years. Consumers have come to expect the fleet of creatives, including the iconic Clydesdale ads. In 2010 and 2011, other brands like Michelob and Stella Artois came to play. What can viewers expect this year?
• Motion Picture: Movies have a strong presence in Super Bowl ad lineup, as studios capitalize on the massive audience to parade their best bets for the year. From 2008-2011, at least one of the top five highest grossing films had a slot in the Super Bowl line up. Motion picture ads increased after 2008 and have had a consistently strong presence during the game since, reaching ten ads in last year’s game.
• Regular Soft Drink: While fewer Soft Drink ads have traditionally aired during the Super Bowl compared to other categories, they make an impact by creating minute-long spots.
• Tortilla Chips: Tortilla Chips have emerged as a highly anticipated category of ads, led by the fan created ads. Last year, three Doritos ads made Nielsen’s Most Liked and Most Remembered list.

TV sports advertising is dominated by a few big spenders, with the top 10 — led by AT&T, Bud Light, Verizon Wireless, McDonald’s and DIRECTV—accounting for roughly a quarter (26%) of the total spend during that time period.

The increase in TV ad spend mirrors a similar increase in the amount of live TV sports content available on TV and cable. There were more than 42,500 hours of live sporting events on national broadcast and cable TV in 2011, a five percent increase over 2010.

• For more insights on sports and media, download Nielsen’s State of the Media: Year in Sports.

Seattle’s KOMO station earned an incremental reach—unduplicated audience—of 2.9 percent from their website for persons 18 and older, amounting to 10 percent of the total combined reach for the station’s late news at 11 o’clock Monday through Friday. The website contributes even more for persons 18-34, boasting a 3.9 percent incremental reach that accounts for nearly a quarter (23%) of the total combined reach.

For Portland’s KATU-TV, KATU.com added 2.8 percent incremental reach to the 28.1 percent reach of the late news. For KATU, ages 25-54 saw the biggest lift thanks to KATU.com with a 4.6 percent reach. The website contributed 14 percent of the combined newscast and website reach for persons 25-54.

Pinpointing the notable differences in demographic composition between website users and newscast viewers helps stations value their inventory, while helping advertisers choose the most efficient vehicle to reach their intended audiences. Both KOMO.com and KATU.com attract significantly different audiences than their TV station counterparts. For example, the KOMO late news audience is 29 percent male, compared to 53 percent for komonews.com. Nearly one-third (31%) of the Komo late news audience and one-quarter (24%) of the komonews.com audience has a household income of $100,000+.

Download the full case study at nielsen.com.

About Fisher Communications
Fisher Communications (FSCI) is an innovative local media company with television, radio, internet and mobile operations throughout the western United States. Fisher operates 18 television stations, which include network affiliations with ABC, CBS, FOX, Univision and The CW that reach 3.5% of U.S. television households, and three radio stations targeting a full range of audience demographics. Fisher Interactive produces more than 120 local and hyper-local websites and delivers comprehensive multiplatform advertising solutions to local businesses. The Company is headquartered at Fisher Plaza in Seattle, WA. More information about Fisher Communications, Inc. is available at www.fsci.com.

Among tablet and smartphone users who downloaded only free apps in the past month, 33 percent chose games, 20 percent chose social networking and 18 percent chose music. However, app downloaders are willing to shell out money. Consumers who downloaded just paid apps or a combination of free and paid apps invested the most in games (35%), maps/navigation (29%) and music (27%).

For additional insights on consumer electronics and media usage, download Nielsen’s State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report.

To track the evolution of the store circular, one need only follow the smudge. A Nielsen survey of 11,000 shoppers found that roughly 60 percent of consumers look at printed circulars at least once a week, but today’s fingerprints are increasingly likely to be found on tablet and smartphone screens as opposed to the pages of paper circulars.

Retailer e-mails are just as likely to reach consumers as the paper circular, and millenials in particular are increasingly likely to view a store’s website on a PC, and are more likely than other demographics to use a social media website or smartphone as an alternative to the paper circular.

While a full 70 percent of shoppers have expressed a desire to have their circulars delivered digitally in some form – via e-mail or over the web – in total only 18 percent of shoppers have ever used a smartphone to determine what’s available in-store and only 33 percent have accessed that information on a tablet device. In contrast, 90 percent of shoppers still want paper delivery. Thus, the transition to digital circulars is expected to be gradual, a gentle migration that will accelerate in proportion with both shoppers’ and retailers’ level of comfort with electronic platforms.

For more information, download the Evolution of Circulars (Q4 2011) report, and watch the accompanying webinar.

Ads for charitable causes also made their mark on TV viewers in Q3. Overall, MasterCard’s Stand Up to Cancer ads, featuring Ray Romano, took the top spot. The Yoplait “Save Lids to Save Lives” commercial also popped out as a well-liked ad overall.

Even more surprising was the degree of variability between the different media sellers. Nielsen found that while the three ad networks reached the campaign’s intended audience 20-30 percent of the time, the women’s interest site, due to its audience composition, was most successful at delivering the intended audience.

For more on this case study, download the report, Building Brands in a Cross-Platform World.

Nielsen research shows that green marketing by auto companies continues to have a positive effect on consumer perceptions with 51 percent of consumers reporting that green marketing initiatives increased their consideration of the product. This is up 24 percent compared to 2010. Social media discussion about auto makers’ green marketing initiatives has also been more positive this year with a 44 percent increase in positive discussion versus 2010.

“Our research identifies how effective auto manufacturers are in raising awareness of their green products, initiatives, and innovations,” said Lois Miller, President, Nielsen Global Automotive. “We can then understand if they were able to change perceptions and consideration in a positive way among consumers.”

“We are thrilled that Nielsen Automotive has again chosen the Los Angeles Auto Show to host its increasingly important Green Marketer of the Year Award,” said Brendan Flynn, Director of Communications for the Los Angeles Auto Show. “Nielsen’s award provides an accurate and important gauge for auto makers and makes a perfect addition to the green story at the LA Show.”

Methodology
To determine the finalists and winner, Nielsen leveraged three research studies to incorporate awareness levels and perceptions across media types. The studies included:

• A custom survey of nearly 7,000 consumers’ cross-media awareness and perceptions of environmental messages by automotive brand
• Response data from 2.5 million viewers of national television advertising collected by Nielsen’s ad effectiveness measurements service, focusing on green automotive ads
• Measuring social media “buzz” sentiment within green-related discussion threads

Auto manufacturers that ran any national TV ads with “green” themes between October 2010 and September 2011 were eligible for consideration.

The analysis coincides with the release of Nielsen’s Fourth Screen Network Audience Report for Q2 2011, which measures the impact of advertising in places like malls, movie theaters, gas stations, bars and more. The report included audience measurement for three U.S. mall advertising video networks and found that malls attract a younger, predominantly female audience than other place-based ad networks. In fact, among consumers 18+, mall video networks attract the highest percentage of female viewers (57%) of any tracked location-based network genre, and the majority of mall viewers (55%) fall within the 18-34 demographic. Incidentally, more than one-fifth of tracked mall goers are aged 12 to 17.

“Malls represent a shopper’s dream come true, and they might offer the same for advertisers,” said Paul Lindstrom, SVP for Nielsen’s On Location service. “Not only is their audience unique from other location-based networks but also they are more likely to spend and engage across the board outside of the mall.”

“Compared to the 8.9 percent growth rate in the first quarter of the year, there was definitely some slowdown,” observed Randall Beard, Global Head of Advertiser Solutions for Nielsen. “But, based on the global economy and the financial problems many countries have experienced, a 5.7 percent increase for quarterly year-on-year global ad spend is still great news.”

Global advertising in Q2 totaled USD127 billion (mainly based on published rate cards and four major media types), and the first half of 2011 closed with a +7.2 percent growth over the same period in 2010.

Highlights from Nielsen’s Global AdView Pulse report:

• Advertising revenue dropped in 16 out of 36 global markets covered by the Nielsen Global AdView Pulse
• Argentina reported the highest year-on-year quarterly increase of 28.5 percent. Egypt was the hardest hit (-51.7% YOY)
• Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) advertising posted its lowest quarterly growth since the Q1 2009 Pulse report: 4 percent globally including declines of -3.6 percent in Europe and -3.0 percent in North America.
• Clothing and accessories, which was among the worst hit recession categories in 2009, posted the highest quarterly year-on-year increase in Q2 – up 17.9 percent globally, driven by a 27.9 percent increase in Asia Pacific.
• While radio posted the largest percentage increase among all traditional media in Q2 (+8.2%), overall television continued to dominate global advertising, accounting for 65 percent of total spend.