From September 2021 to May 2022, US sports betting operators spent an estimated $282m on TV advertisements, according to an iSpot.TV report released in June 2022.

The combined advertising generated more than 18 billion impressions and, iSpot noted, over one-third of sportsbook advertising impressions were local ads. This validates our previous position that a state-by-state marketing approach is imperative due to the advantages of localization.

And TVREV co-founder and analyst Alan Wolk expects the CTV OS wars will be the most important battle in streaming for 2023, though most of the action is happening outside the U.S.

TVOS is a big deal, Wolk wrote in a January 3 blog, because with ownership of the smart TV interface also comes power.

“They are the gatekeepers for programming: which apps to allow on the interface, how easy they are to find, how much those programmers have to pay to have their content featured on the home screen,” wrote Wolk. “Owning the OS also gives those companies a lot of data about program and ad viewership that they can both monetize and use to improve the consumer experience.”

With more streaming players getting in on the smart TV action, TVREV analyst Alan Wolk in a recent column pointed to the importance of owning the smart TV interface.

“They are the gatekeepers for programming: which apps to allow on the interface, how easy they are to find, how much those programmers have to pay to have their content featured on the home screen,” wrote Wolk. “Owning the OS also gives those companies a lot of data about program and ad viewership that they can both monetize and use to improve the consumer experience.”

According to Vizio, the National Football League (NFL) had 6 percent of all linear TV minutes measured from September 1 to November 21, 2022, while college football had just over 4.5 percent of measured minutes. Major League Baseball (MLB) programming was in third place with just over 1 percent of all total live minutes measured.

The data was released by Vizio Inscape, the company’s data measurement arm, and TV ad measurement firm iSpot.tv. It was first published in the December 2022 edition of Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

In other Genius Brands news, the company is launching its Kartoon Channel! platform on Vizio Smart TV today, leveraging its catalogue of original (Superhero Kindergarten) and licensed (Peppa Pig) content. The kid-focused OTT channel will also join the in-flight entertainment lineup on British Airways, Qatar Airways, Aer Lingus and Iberia.

A few highlights: Frontier thinks you should “uncable yourself” and instead get fiber internet. Proactiv, the skincare brand, serves up an enthusiastic testimonial from an actual customer named Charlotte. And FreshDirect says, “Why settle for food delivered, when you can have food that delivers you?”

But while the measurement firm worked on bridging its digital and linear metrics, its competitors were stealing a march. Broadcasters struck deals with rival measurement companies – Warner Bros. Discovery with VideoAmp; NBCUniversal with iSpot – trialling the alternative currencies during the 2022 upfronts season.

In particular, TV spending is falling. For the three-month period ending Dec. 12, real estate brands spent $160.3 million on national TV ads, an 11% drop from the year-earlier period, ad measurement firm iSpot.tv found.

In March of 2022, NBC Universal signed an agreement with yet another Nielsen rival, iSpot TV, which uses a variety of technologies – including ACR integrations in cable boxes and smart TVs – to compile its statistics. Unlike many of its other competitiors, iSpot also generates extensive audience survey data, including sentiment around individual creative choices, emotional reactions to specific content and attention-based metrics like “likeability” and “watchability.”

The data was released by Vizio Inscape, the company’s data measurement arm, and TV ad measurement firm iSpot.tv. It was first published in the December 2022 edition of Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

According to Vizio Insight and iSpot.TV, the most-watched content on linear television during the fall season was:
National Football League: 5.99%
College football: 4.57%
Major League Baseball: 1.02%
Law & Order, Special Victims Unit: 0.95%
ABC’s Good Morning America: 0.79%
NBC’s Today Show: 0.73%
ESPN’s SportsCenter: 0.67%
Friends: 0.61%
NCIS: 0.53%
Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends: 0.52%

Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were a bonanza for TV networks running live sports, delivering an estimated $604 million revenue, notes SBJ’s David Broughton after analyzing data from iSpot.tv.

WBD owns a number of top-rated ad supported cable networks as well as streamers HBO Max and Discovery+ which are expected to merge later this year. WDB will continue to also use Nielsen data. There are several other audience measurement providers including ComscoreSCOR +2.1% and iSpot also competing with Nielsen. At this time, the audience measurement components of VideoAmp, Comscore and iSpot are also not accredited by the MRC.

The holiday season was kind to networks, as advertising around sports telecasts on Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day delivered an estimated $604 million in ad revenue, according to an analysis of iSpot.tv data by SBJ’s David Broughton.

Christmas Day was big for brand spending, as sports telecasts saw $322.7 million worth of TV ads (80% of all TV ad spending that day). A slate of three NFL games ($230.47 million) and five NBA matchups ($72 million) took the bulk of that money. Across those NFL/NBA games, Pfizer was the biggest brand spender at just over $6.8 million, followed closely by HBO Max.

iSpot, the TV measurement company, today released its 2022 TV advertising report, containing exclusive insights from currency initiatives with TV networks, findings from CTV verification studies and tallies from measuring every second of advertising on linear, time shifted and VOD on TV.

The report contains rankings by ad impressions and spend for top networks, shows, industries and reveals actionable insights such as where brands obtained the most reach for the dollar, the optimal mix for streaming and linear, what creatives scored highest for various emotions and more.

Total TV advertising impressions in 2022 from linear, streaming and local programming were down 3.5% versus the year before to 8.0 trillion, according to iSpot.tv.

Although impressions dipped for legacy TV last year, iSpot says national TV advertising spend grew 6% to $45.36 billion.

The entry into manufacturing is the reverse of what smart-TV makers Samsung, Vizio and LG have done in recent years. While continuing to manufacture electronics, they have expanded their streaming presence across original programming and FAST channels, looking to create advertiser-friendly complements to their hardware.

While funding dried up, advertisers’ spending on influencers continued to grow, as we had forecast. The number of campaigns influencers ran with advertisers rose 50% last year from 2021, according to influencer marketing firm CreatorIQ. However, as the economic downturn continues this year, it’s not yet clear how much the pullback in advertising spending will cut into influencer marketing deals.

Say what you will about Grey’s Anatomy, but the show has its fans – and music searchers, as end-of-year data from Tunefind (a Songtradr company) recently revealed. Grey’s Anatomy had 1% more music searches on Tunefind in 2022 than HBO hit Euphoria to continue its hot streak as the top show on the platform. However, Euphoria’s searches came from a wider range of viewers – 44% more uniques than Grey’s.

Unlike market leaders Samsung, LG and Vizio, most of these smaller OEMs don't have the resources to create and manage their own TVOS.

Via iSpot.tv, the real-time TV measurement company. Rankings are by share of TV ad impressions, for new episodes only.

College football’s biggest bowl games helped the sport deliver the largest share of TV ad impressions from December 26-January 1. Major contests like the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl, and thrilling College Football Playoff semifinal matchups in the Fiesta Bowl and Peach Bowl, totaled 20.64% of TV ad impressions — up from 2.04% the previous week.