Every weekday we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company.

Cassandra Arora, CMO at iSpot sees 2023 as the year that brands look to measurement to help them reach all parts of the funnel with greater precision.

Walt Disney's 20th Century Studios' release spent an estimated $24.9 million in national TV advertising -- with 3,657 airings of commercials, (starting up in earnest on November 21) and yielding 851.5 million impressions, according to iSpot.tv estimates.

By comparison, the biggest national TV ad spend this year for a movie's opening weekend so far was Universal Pictures' “Jurassic World Dominion” at $41.4 million, with 1.52 billion impressions.

When it comes to prescription brands, pharma TV ad spending grew 8% in 2022, reaching a total of $4.05 billion. Some of that growth was fueled by large increases in ad spend for specific categories of drugs, according to Tyler Bobin, senior brand analyst at real-time ad tracker iSpot.TV. For example, national TV ad spend for the psoriasis, skin and nail industry jumped a whopping 46% from one year ago.

"The bears know the ice will be back soon - they're waiting," says Alysa McCall, from Polar Bears International (PBI).

Alysa and her team are in the Canadian Arctic just outside Churchill, Manitoba, in a tundra buggy - an observation lab on tracks, which allows them to watch bears in safety. "Looking over the last couple of decades, it forms later and later and it breaks up earlier and earlier in spring," Dr Flavio Lehner, of conservation charity PBI, says.

Online, the livestream of Game 2 tallied 1.6 million views on Facebook, 265,000 views on YouTube, and 61,600 views on Twitter according to data from Tubular Labs.

VIZIO's New Calibration Panel For ACR
Vizio’s Inscape launched a first of its kind calibration panel for its ACR data this week in a move that should quiet down some of ACR’s naysayers.

A calibration panel is essentially what it sounds like: a way to make sure that the ACR data Inscape collects from its 21 million opted-in users is in line with the size of those groups as per U.S. Census data.

Influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ tells Ad Age Datacenter that so far Louis Vuitton is the brand that’s earned the most World Cup-related social media “engagements” (i.e., shares, comments and likes) thanks to its hyper-viral “Victory Is a State of Mind” Instagram campaign.

Another key trend revealed was that consumers are not very loyal to TV set brands, creating another measurement challenge for the industry. Many of the new currencies use Vizio data but projecting household viewing based on usage of Vizio smart TVs will not produce a complete picture as 86% of households with one Vizio TV have other TVs from other brands. Even in households with two Vizio TVs, other brands of TVs are present in 70% of cases.

Every weekday we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company.

TripleLift, the advertising technology company reinventing ad placement has announced the selection of iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company as a preferred independent measurement company for its Connected TV (CTV) advertising offering. The partnership provides a turnkey audience measurement solution for advertisers and publishers in video.

TV analytics firm iSpot.tv tells Ad Age Datacenter that coverage of the 2022 games has thus far served up 8.4 billion TV ad impressions across English and Spanish-language airings in the U.S.—on Fox and NBCUniversal’s Telemundo and Universo—which marks a 20% increase from the 7.1 billion TV ad impressions delivered during the 2018 World Cup. Spanish-language coverage of the World Cup is the real driver, accounting for roughly 5 billion of those 8.4 billion impressions.

VIZIO Builds Census-Representative ACR PanelVIZIO has built a census-representative panel using automatic content recognition (ACR) data from its subsidiary Inscape. Measurement provider Innovid will use the “National Representative Panel” (NRP), which has access to ACR data from approximately 21 million smart TVs.

MotorTrend FAST TV will now stream on Vizio WatchFree+. The channel is a showcase for auto enthusiasts. Viewers can access the MotorTrend FAST TV channel in the Sports + Outdoor category on Vizio by finding channel 607 on the program guide.

Dodge’s “The Real Brotherhood of Muscle” ad featuring user-generated social media content from Dodge owners appeared during a long list of programs on the week, with the most TV ad impressions coming during Today’s third hour, according to iSpot.tv.

Samsung: The electronics brand tops the list of most likeable holiday ads this year, according to a recent ranking from iSpot. Samsung’s whimsical TV spot shows a young girl and boy sharing some holiday cheer via mobile phone as their buildings grow ever closer.

The league’s nationally televised games this season to date have generated $153.3 million in ad revenue, according to an SBJ analysis of iSpot.tv data, up 14% over the same period last season. Google, which joined as a league sponsor in 2019, is the top advertiser so far, spending heavily to promote the release of its latest Pixel smartphone ahead of the holiday season. The tech company spent $6.4 million through Dec. 14, a 46% increase over what it had spent during the same period last season.

TripleLift will leverage iSpot.tv’s cross platform ad measurement capabilities to verify creative delivery across spots and In-Show ad placements at the household level, measure CTV impressions and give customers a view into the incremental reach generated against congruent linear campaigns. By leveraging TripleLift’s proprietary systems and iSpot.tv’s audience measurement capabilities, brands can optimise campaigns for right time, on target delivery against age, gender and advanced audiences.

The Mini x Icecream ‘Save the Polar Bears Collection’ includes a tee, a hoodie, and a keychain, retailing for $150. Importantly, 100% of the capsule collection’s proceeds at checkout will be donated to Polar Bears International and its education and outreach efforts “dedicated to informing, inspiring, and providing a powerful platform for saving the polar bears and the arctic region”.