Posted by truecreek on January 12, 2010 under More Dam News | 
By Julia Boorstin, CNBC Correspondent
The Super Bowl is now less than a month away, and it’s not just football fans who are getting geared up. Advertisers and media giants are carefully watching this year’s super bowl as a barometer of the health of the advertising economy.
First the bad news: the carefully watched cost of a 30-second spot is down this year. Advertisers are paying $2.5 million to $2.8 million, down from $3 million a year ago, according to a TNS Media Intelligence report issued today. This is only the second time in Super Bowl history that ad pricing has dropped from one year to the next.
Pepsi , the number two Super Bowl advertiser over the past two decades, will not buy a spot in the broadcast for the first time in 23 years. General Motors, which was a major advertiser for the event until it dropped out last year, will not advertise again this year. Ditto for Fed Ex, which last year sat out the event for the first time in 12 years.
The good news: CBS reports that it’s sold out nearly every one of its 62 available ads, which puts it in a stronger position than NBC was in at this point last year. Even though the price for a 30-second commercial is lower, the price of an ad has still more than quadrupled in the past 20 years. And while advertisers always drop out, newcomers always join, accounting for 20 to 25% of the advertisers.
The fact that nearly all of CBS’ ad inventory is sold a month before the event indicates that demand is coming back.
While the lower ad rate isn’t great, many of last year’s ads were sold before the financial crisis really took hold, so last year’s rates may not take into account the full decline before the 2009 Super Bowl. We’ll see how long it takes to sell the final few ads, and we’ll see if some new mega brands emerge to replace stalwarts like GM and Pepsi.
Posted by truecreek on December 30, 2009 under More Dam News |
By John Eggerton
For more than 60 years, TV stations have broadcast news, sports and entertainment for free and made their money by showing commercials. That might not work much longer.
The business model is unraveling at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and the local stations that carry the networks’ programming. Cable TV and the Web have fractured the audience for free TV and siphoned its ad dollars. The recession has squeezed advertising further, forcing broadcasters to accelerate their push for new revenue to pay for programming.
That will play out in living rooms across the country. The changes could mean higher cable or satellite TV bills, as the networks and local stations squeeze more fees from pay-TV providers such as Comcast and DirecTV for the right to show broadcast TV channels in their lineups.
The networks might even ditch free broadcast signals in the next few years. Instead, they could operate as cable channels — a move that could spell the end of free TV as Americans have known it since the 1940s.
“Good programming is expensive,” Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox, told a shareholder meeting this fall. “It can no longer be supported solely by advertising revenues.”
More of ‘Business Model Unraveling for TV Networks’ here.
Posted by truecreek on December 16, 2009 under More Dam News |
This article brings up a good point that the increased usage of DVRs creates a huge problem for any advertiser whose television spot is time constrained .
By Brian Steinberg, AdAge
The ability to delay viewing of TV shows by using a digital video recorder is giving rise to noticeably different habits, according to new research from Horizon Media.
Through November 2009, 11 fall season programs were regularly “time-shifted,” or watched as many as seven days after the date of original air, by more than 3 million viewers, said Brad Adgate, the independent media-buying firm’s senior VP-research. Last year at this time, only three programs — ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” Fox’s “House” and CBS’s “CSI” — fit that bill.
The trend is cause for scrutiny among TV outlets and advertisers, because the more people who watch TV programs longer after they air, the more difficult it is to reach them with a timely ad pitch.
While futurists project one day advertisers may well be able to insert more relevant advertising into recorded programming, these days marketers remain concerned that ads for particular events — Friday-night movie openings and weekend sales at retail outlets — amount to naught when consumers watch them five or six days after they were intended to run.
Entire article, “The Most Time-Shifted Shows of the Fall Season” here.
Posted by truecreek on November 30, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Meg James
There’s finally some new life in old media.
After pummeling traditional media companies for nearly two years, the advertising recession is showing signs of a recovery. TV networks — including Fox, CBS and ABC and such leading cable channels as TNT, TBS, USA, Bravo and Fox News Channel — have benefited the most as advertisers have been snapping up available commercial spots and agreeing to pay significantly higher prices than they did just five months ago.
“In challenging times, people go back to what they know, and what they know best is television,” said David Levy, president of sales for Turner Entertainment, which includes TNT and TBS. “It is a little too early to declare victory, but the market is definitely improving.”
The welcome news is the result of stronger-than-expected demand for TV advertising in the “scatter” market, in which advertisers frequently have to pay premiums for scarce available commercial time. It also represents something of a win for the networks, which gambled this summer that demand would pick up later in the year and held back a larger percentage of their inventory than in previous years, hoping to capitalize on the improved economy.
Fourth-quarter commercial sales have been propelled by retail chains hoping to ignite their holiday sales; technology giants Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc., which have new products to promote; cellphone carriers such as Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, which are battling for customers; and even such financial firms as American Express, according to television executives and advertising buyers surveyed this week.
Such strong demand has made up for the weaker orders from other mainstay advertisers, including automakers, still reeling from weak sales, and Hollywood movie studios, which have fewer new movies to hype.
A fourth quarter described by one top network sales executive as “gangbusters” amazed even veterans who have lived through several economic cycles. Only five months ago, the industry was bracing for another dismal year as TV network sales teams were engaged in protracted negotiations with advertisers that were demanding that the networks roll back prices as much as 20%. Networks eventually agreed to trim rates about 5% to 8% to mollify advertisers and begin unloading their time.
But now, in some cases, advertisers have agreed to pay rates 10% to 35% higher than the prices established in June and July, when the networks sold the bulk of their time for the new TV season. In addition, advertisers that placed their orders in the summer are honoring their commitments. Network executives said that few advertisers have canceled their orders for commercial spots, in contrast with a year ago.
“We have all been surprised that the ad market has come back this soon,” said Gary Carr, executive director of national broadcast for the advertising firm TargetCast. The networks, he said, also face easier comparisons because last fall, with banks failing and the economy on the skids, companies were afraid to spend on advertising.
“A year ago, people thought the world was coming to an end, and the U.S. economy was falling apart,” Carr said. “But the world did not come to an end. Cars still have to be sold, and studios still need people to go see their movies. Advertisers have begun releasing the money that they have been holding onto all year.”
Even local TV stations — among the hardest hit by the slump in advertising spending — have received a lift, primarily fueled by stores that unleashed their holiday sales campaigns earlier in the season, according to television executives.
Not all media outlets have rebounded, however. Many small cable TV channels and Spanish-language television networks are still hurting, according to television executives. Newspapers, magazines and radio stations also continue to struggle.
“In many sectors, the news is still grim,” said Jon Swallen, senior vice president for research at TNS Media Intelligence, which tracks advertising spending. “And there is still a fairly large hole for these companies to dig out of before they get back to the levels they were a few years ago.”
Unexpectedly, online advertising also has taken it on the chin.
Many advertisers are no longer as eager to buy Internet display ads as they were two or three few years ago, when firms were steering millions of ad dollars to online sites.
“There is still a big push toward digital and online video, but the Internet display advertising market is challenged,” said Greg Kahn, senior vice president of strategic insights at advertising firm Optimedia. “There is so much clutter in the space, and advertisers have begun to question the effectiveness of those display ads.”
More here.
