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.

Scripted Shows for Teens, Realities for Older Females
Teen and Millennial viewers in particular dedicated over a third of their primetime scripted TV viewing to series depicting at least one regular or recurring LGBT character.* Females 50 and older were attracted to realities featuring LGBT cast-members, hosts, judges and/or competitors, dedicating a significant share of their reality TV time to these programs.* Overall, one in four scripted series and one in five reality shows were LGBT-inclusive.

“The inclusion of LGBT characters on TV more accurately portrays the diverse and multicultural society we live in by encompassing all segments of the population,” said Matt O’Grady, EVP, Audience Measurement, Nielsen.

LGBT-Inclusive Shows Attract Dynamic Audiences
Audiences for LGBT-inclusive shows were as diverse as the programs themselves, though certain demographics appear to have been more exposed to LGBT images. Within the 25-49 age demographic, LGBT-inclusive programs (and its advertisers) were most likely to reach:

• College-educated white females
• Small white collar households
• Budding families (those with 3 or fewer members)

Non-white, professional Millennials without children also tended to watch LGBT-inclusive shows more frequently than primetime in general.

LGBT-Inclusive characters were incorporated into shows that skewed towards Eastern and Pacific viewers and were less watched by Midwesterners. This differential was most pronounced among 18-24 year olds in the Midwest, especially when compared to 18-24 year olds in other regions of the U.S.

Motion Pictures and Department Stores Drive Advertising
LGBT characters and plots were woven into some of the most popular broadcast primetime programs last season, and advertisers were investing their budgets there too. Motion pictures and department stores were the top categories that drove advertising on LGBT-inclusive programming, devoting 28.3 percent and 27.6 percent of their ad dollars, respectively.

Credit cards, telephone, and tech companies also spent a significant share of ad dollars with LGBT-friendly programs. Of the top 10 overall advertising categories, retail and pharmaceuticals dedicated less of their ad budgets to these shows than they did on the average for all categories.

*This list was determined by GLAAD in conjunction with their Where We Are On TV Report: 2010-2011 Season, and includes scripted programs such as Modern Family, Grey’s Anatomy, The Office, 90210, Glee and House, as well as reality shows such as Dancing with the Stars and Big Brother 12. GLAAD’s Where We Are on TV Report: 2011-2012 is now available at www.glaad.org.

Orville Redenbacher’s Pop Up Bowl commercial, featuring Criss Angel, was the most memorable ad of the quarter.

• Timeshifting continues to be a significant factor in how consumers watch TV. In fact, 38 percent of all TV households in the U.S. have a DVR
• Mobile Video viewing has increased 41 percent from last year. The heaviest users of mobile video are teens ages 12-17 who watch 7 hours 13 minutes of mobile video a month
• Viewing video online also continues to increase. In January 2011 143.9 million Americans viewed video online
• The TV audience for sports is expanding. Record numbers of African Americans, Hispanics and female viewers helped drive the Super Bowl’s audience growth
• The audience overlap between visitors to network and broadcast media sites and social networking & blog sites is significant. In January 2011 alone, 49 percent of social networking & blog site visitors also visited TV network and broadcast media sites
• Television advertising spend was the largest medium for all ad spending in 2010, accounting for $69 billion.

For more information on these TV viewing trends, download State of the Media: Trends in TV Viewing- TV Upfronts 2011

Ad Spending Overview

• $117B was spent on all U.S. advertising in 2009. 57% of all ad spending in 2009 went into Television, making it the largest medium for advertisers. Print media earned approximately 28% of ad dollars, while Internet earned 7% of all ad dollars.
• The top spending product category for national TV was Automotive with $3.4B spent in 2009. The most significant growth by any one category among the top 20 was mobile phones, with national TV spend growing almost 200% to $587M in 2009.
• Ad dollars spent in primetime in national television account for about 50% of total TV ad dollars.
• The 30-second commercial remains the television advertising standard in primetime, accounting for 54% of all commercials (2009). However, the number of 30-second commercials has decreased 5% in primetime, while the number of 15-second commercials has increased 6%.
• For more, including ad effectiveness data, download Nielsen Advertising Fact Sheet.

Event Video

On Monday, Steve Hasker, President of Media Services, The Nielsen Company, announced a “major step forward” in online advertising measurement, Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings.

On Tuesday, Jonathan Carson, CEO of Nielsen’s Telecom practice, presented findings from Nielsen’s Connected Devices Playbook, which measures the impact of iPads, Kindles and various other net-ready devices.

The Video Consumer Mapping (VCM) study sponsored by the Council for Research Excellence (CRE) also found that the frequency of channel-changing and moving rooms is similar before, during and after commercial breaks.  Only 14% of viewers change channels during the break, compared to 11% just before commercials and 13% just after.  Likewise, room changing patterns were similar: 20% of viewers change rooms during commercials, compared to 19% before and 21% after.

Many TV viewers are simultaneously doing other things, but “multi-tasking” behavior patterns don’t change during commercial breaks. Multi-tasking was found to accompany 45% of all media use, with “care for another” and “meal preparation” being the two top activities.  Fully 55% of viewers were found to be solely engaged with media.

“When commercials come on, people stay with the TV.  They only go to the kitchen if they’re hungry, and they don’t fight over the remote,” said Laura Cowan, Vice President and Media Director of RJC Advertising and Chairperson of the CRE’s Media Consumption & Engagement Committee.  “For years, media professionals have been wrestling with the question of whether viewers actually pay attention to commercial breaks.  This new data, the result of actually embedding observers with a statistically significant number of TV viewers, is a major development in terms of learning what people watch and how they watch it.”

The VCM study was the first ever to involve in-person, computer-assisted observation of the media consumption habits of 376 adults and generated data covering more than three-quarters of a million minutes, or a total of 752 observed days.

Read the full Video Consumer Mapping study press release from the Council for Research Excellence.

Spanish Language Ad Spending
Nielsen found that Spanish Language advertising was down 4.7% in the U.S. last year. A total of $5.4 billion was spent on all Spanish Language media in 2009, down almost $270 million from the previous year. The slide was paced by significant declines in National Magazine and Local Newspaper advertising, which were down 38% and 25%, respectively.

The decreases in print media were offset by a 32% increase in Spanish Language Cable advertising. Nielsen found that 19 of the top 20 advertisers in the medium increased their ad spends year over year.

Spot TV was the top cash generator for Spanish Language media in 2009 with an estimated $1.4 billion in ad sales, down 10% compared to the previous year.

African-American Ad Spending
Spending on African-American media saw a similar decline of 7.3% in 2009. The decline was paced by decreased spending in Network TV (-72%) and National Magazines (-33%).

Increased spending on Cable TV helped balance out the losses. Advertisers spent 35% more on African-American Cable in 2009, thanks to added spending by each one of the top 20 advertisers in the category.

Spot Radio earned the most revenue among African-American media in 2009. Advertisers spent $748 million on the medium last year, almost 10% less than in 2008.

Product Categories
The top spending product category for both Spanish Language and African-American media was Quick Service Restaurants. Advertisers within the category spent $335 million on Spanish Language media and $87 million on African-American media. McDonald’s was the top fast food advertiser in both media segments.

The Automotive category was the next highest spender in both multicultural media. Spending in Spanish Language was down 39% in 2009, paced by double-digit percent losses by each of the top five auto advertisers. Spending by the auto industry in African-American media was down 18% year over year.

The category showing the most growth among the top 10 Spanish Language advertisers was Satellite TV providers. Advertisers in this category upped their ad spends 77% in 2009, as satellite TV companies made the pitch for their services in the run up to the DTV transition in June 2009. According to Nielsen data, a larger percentage of Hispanic households were not ready for the transition than non-Hispanic households at the end of 2008.

Insurance companies showed the most growth among the top 10 African-American media spenders. General Insurance and Car Insurance categories placed 8^th and 9^th after increases of 29% and 24%, respectively. The Motion Picture category showed similar growth, increasing its spend 24% to $72 million.

Spanish Language
- 5 television networks, 6 cable networks
- 53 local television stations across 27 markets
- 74 radio stations across 24 markets
- 8 local newspapers across 5 markets
- 20 national magazines

African-American
- Radio: 105 stations across 34 markets. The following formats were included: Black News & Talk, Gospel, Urban Reggaeton, Smooth Jazz, Urban, Urban AC, and Urban Oldies.
- Network & Syndication TV: Programs with an African-American audience composition of 50% or greater.
- National Magazines: 12 national magazines
- Cable TV: BET & TV One, as well as other programs across various networks that achieve an African-American audience comp of 50% or greater and African-American P2+ projection of 100,000 or greater.

Hybrids air during commercial pods and include customized ads, branded promos, vignettes, interstitials and micro-series where sponsor messaging is combined with program or entertainment content. Among viewers 13+. Only new executions considered, airing from Jan – Nov 2009. Results for this annual list are aggregated to the brand/program or brand/network level. The Recall Score is the percentage of TV viewers who can recall within 24 hours the sponsor of a Hybrid ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing primetime TV on broadcast and major cable networks. These scores are then indexed against the mean score for all new Hybrids during the time period (Recall Index). 100 equals average Recall.

For example, with a Recall Index of 310 the top ranked Bayer/Monk tie-in has proven to be over 3 times as memorable as the average new Hybrid ad during Jan- Nov 2009. ]]> http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/most-recalled-hybrid-tv-ads-of-2009/feed/ 0 http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/survey-most-super-bowl-viewers-tune-in-for-the-commercials/ http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/survey-most-super-bowl-viewers-tune-in-for-the-commercials/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:36:33 +0000 Nielsen Wire http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?p=19434 The majority of Super Bowl viewers enjoy the game’s ads more than the action on the field, according to results of a survey released today by The Nielsen Company. Fifty-one percent of those questioned said they most enjoy the commercials that air throughout the game when compared to the Super Bowl game itself. Forty-nine percent said that they enjoy the game more than the ads. Results were based on a sample of more than 25,000 households in Nielsen’s Homescan panel.

“This survey reinforces the value of the Super Bowl as a marketing bonanza, featuring one of the most receptive TV audiences in the world,” said Randall Beard, executive vice president of Nielsen IAG. “With so many viewers waiting for the pitch, the pressure is on advertisers to create and place ads that will have a lasting impact.”

Score early
It’s no secret that Super Bowl ads on average are more effective than the typical television commercial. But when it comes to ad placement, one trend is clear: earlier really is better. Ads placed in the first quarter of the Super Bowl are better remembered and are better liked. There is a steep drop-off as the game progresses until the fourth quarter, when ad performance settles at a level that is closer to the average for all television ads.

“Even in the Super Bowl, viewers can fall victim to ‘ad fatigue,’” said Beard. “Viewers have difficulty maintaining such a high level of focus for that many ads. It doesn’t matter if the game is a blowout or a nail-biter.”

More Nielsen data regarding consumer spending, media consumption and social media will be released in the run up to the Super Bowl.

Cable TV (+ 9.1%), Spanish Language Cable TV (+36.7%), and Free-Standing Insert (FSI) Coupons (+11.2%) were the only three measured media to post any growth. The remaining media suffered declines, ranging from Internet (-0.5%) to Local Sunday Supplements (-48.3%).

“The struggling economy continues to take its toll on the advertising industry, with most sectors lower than last year,” said Terrie Brennan, Senior VP for New Business Development at Nielsen. “In general, television – particularly cable television – seems to be holding up better than print-based media. For example, Local Newspapers have seen 12,000 fewer advertisers in their pages in 2009. Meanwhile, nine of the top ten Cable TV advertisers have increased their spending in the medium so far this year.”

Spanish language television’s ad spend (cable and network combined) fell a slight 0.7 percent, while African-American TV (a subset of Network, Cable, Syndicated, and Local) enjoyed a 31 percent increase in spending. Overall, TV ad spending fell 8.3 percent year-to-year through the first three quarters. But ads placed on television accounted for 56.8 percent of all advertising expenditures so far this year, up two percentage points over the same period in 2008.

Product Category Advertising
Automotive continued its reign as the top ad-spending category through the first three quarters of 2009, despite a nearly 31 percent decline. The Pharmaceutical category placed a far second, even with a 4.6 percent decline of its own. Only two categories in the top ten showed any growth: Direct Response Products (+3.3%) and Quick Service Restaurants (+1.8%).

Further Nielsen analysis of the top product categories unveils some revealing insights on where their money was spent through the first three quarters of 2009:

• Almost 70 percent of all U.S. ad spending by the top ten product categories was invested in television.
• Despite Pharmaceutical’s overall decline, the category upped its radio ad spend 137 percent and its Internet spend increased by one-third.
• Television ad spend by Quick Service Restaurants remained essentially flat year-over-year, but the category dramatically boosted its print (+42%) and Internet (+88%) budgets.
• Local Auto Dealerships dropped their overall ad budgets 27 percent, but increased Internet ad spends 45 percent. The category is also the only one out the top ten that spent more on print media ($1.5 billion) than TV ($610 million) in the first nine months of the year.