In particular, TV spending is on the rise. Travel brands spent $105.6 million on TV in December, a 49% uptick over the year-earlier period, and with a spend of $89 million during the first 20 days of the current month, were also on track to exceed January 2022 numbers as well, ad measurement firm iSpot.tv found.

National Football League games, and big viewing audiences, are typically popular with drugmakers looking to advertise product brands. However, this year, Pfizer’s broader Covid vaccine encouragement and treatment awareness advertising led the pharma charge by a wide margin during both NFL regular season and postseason national broadcasts, according to real-time TV ad tracker iSpot.tv.

Pfizer spent almost $90 million during the regular season and another $18 million during the playoffs ahead of all pharma companies and brands, iSpot reported in a tabulation for Endpoints News.

TV and soundbar maker VIZIO has announced a new AutoUpdate for 2023 for its TV user interface and mobile app to provide users with a more streamlined control and navigation experience.

From Kaitlyn Collins, VP of Product Marketing for VIZIO: “At VIZIO, the customer experience has been and always will remain the primary focus of everything we do,…We are dedicated to providing exceptional value with our products, even beyond the original purchase. By delivering new features and capabilities to VIZIO users with our free AutoUpdates, we amplify the value of our TV lineup.”

“We're very sensitive to viewers' privacy, it is absolutely front and center to everything we do at VIZIO Ads,” states Travis Hockersmith, Group Vice President, Platform+ as VIZIO Ads. “We know, for example, if they have explicitly opted in to ACR detection We know what they've watched with, but we don't collect any PII or Personally Identifiable Information on those users, or pass that information in any way that would violate the privacy that our viewers expect.”

Still some competitors don’t seem too worried about Roku smart TVs. Mike O’Donnell, CRO at Vizio, suggested during a January investor conference that the smart TV maker isn’t overly concerned with competition from Roku TVs, noting the company's own long-standing relationships with retailers including Walmart and Target that give it favorable placement.

That includes innovating with sustainability at the forefront, phasing out fur in its manufacturing, and forging intentional partnerships, like with Polar Bears International—a 10-plus-year relationship in which a percentage of sales from a collection goes back to the organization that’s dedicated to the conservation of polar bears and the sea ice they depend on—and expanding in the South Asian market, too. The brand further supports those living in the High Arctic by sending them materials that would otherwise be incredibly costly for them to purchase. And within the three years since the launch of Humanature, the response has been “globally phenomenal,” particularly among millennials and Gen Z.

Data from global video measurement and analytics platform Tubular Labs show that from January 1 to 15, the Network's official YouTube channel (GMANetwork) has outperformed ABS-CBN's in terms of views.

GMA Network tallied a total of 167 million views, leading over ABS-CBN Entertainment's 158 million views.

ISpot has had a webpage on the commercial since January 23, 2023, but only seemingly for the teaser version of it. It invites people to tune in to the Super Bowl LVII on February 12 to “see if Tony will go down in the history books as a golf champion.”

The most-seen automaker ads in 2022 were Nissan: Today Is Made For Thrill - Why Wait for Tomorrow? (0.86%), Nissan: 60 Years In 60 Seconds (0.85%), Dodge: We Only Do Power (0.80%), Kia: Beachcomber (0.73%) and Subaru: Well Adventured (0.71%).

The biggest TV ad impressions increases among top 15 brands, 2022 vs. 2021 included Hyundai (up 8.34%), Cadillac (up 3.31%) and GMC (up 0.61%), per iSpot.tv.

After soaring for years, streamers' national TV advertising has seen a pullback in some TV ad metrics since the start of the new 2022-2023 season in September.

Total estimated paid advertising/media value for national TV advertising dropped 5% to $869.8 million in the period from September 28, 2022 through January 28 of this year, according to iSpot.tv.

Songtradr hired Amber Morris as its global account director for TikTok. Morris brings over 11 years of experience building and managing relationships with agencies, brands, media companies and production studios.

First the DOJ announced that it was filing an antitrust lawsuit against Google for its monopolistic domination of the ad tech market, which has the stated goal of forcing Google to sell off its ad tech products.

It’s the culmination of a series of lawsuits against big tech companies that are based on never-tried-before legal theories in an attempt to reign in the tech giants, most of which have little to no competition.

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. (Scroll down to watch them all.)

A few highlights: Allspring Global Investments (the former asset management unit of Wells Fargo that was spun off in 2021) says, “We dissect the market from every angle, helping to build portfolios that redefine what’s possible.” Macy’s hypes its Big Home Sale, on now through Feb. 14. And Hulu promotes “Killing County,” a new three-part docuseries from ABC News Studios and Executive Producer Colin Kaepernick that looks into police corruption in Bakersfield, California.

Data from Tribe Dynamics shows that most beauty brands saw declines in earned media value in 2022 — even those that saw a year-over-year increase in the number of social media creators mentioning them — largely due to the growing shift toward short-form video content, which brands are still learning to navigate.

“It’s not that the underlying drivers of EMV are changing dramatically, but more that there’s a shift in consumer preference in terms of types of content and channels; that’s the most significant change that’s occurring,” said Conor Begley, cofounder of Tribe Dynamics and chief strategy officer at parent company, CreatorIQ.

According to Geoff York, the senior director of conservation at Polar Bears International and an expert in human-polar bear coexistence, the recent attack in Wales, Alaska, was “extraordinarily rare.” Most polar bear attacks happen during the ice-free season when it’s warmer and there’s less sea ice.

When the Super Bowl airs on Feb. 12, chances are you’re going to hear a whole lot of familiar music included in the must-watch ads.

According to a review of the most-liked 2022 Super Bowl ads that included licensed music by Songtradr, 85% featured songs released years — even decades — ago. What’s more, an additional post-game analysis shows that all had the most notable upticks in on-demand streams and Shazam track ID activity following the game.

Vizio Holding Corp (VZIO) has fallen Friday morning, with the stock declining -3.70% in pre-market trading to 8.32. VZIO's short-term technical score of 11 indicates that the stock has traded less bullishly over the last month than 89% of stocks on the market. In the Consumer Electronics industry, which ranks 141 out of 146 industries, VZIO ranks higher than 14% of stocks. Vizio Holding Corp has risen 16.91% over the past month, closing at $7.41 on December 30. During this period of time, the stock fell as low as $7.27 and as high as $8.79. VZIO has an average analyst recommendation of Strong Buy. The company has an average price target of $14.23.

The smart TV market report includes players such as LG Electronics Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sony Corp, VIZIO Inc., Videocon Industries Ltd., Sansui Electric Co. Ltd., Toshiba Corp, Haier Electronics Group Co., Ltd., Xiaomi Corp., Hisense Group.

Scripps’ carriage agreement with YouTube TV comes about a month after the broadcaster signed a distribution deal with FuboTV, which saw seven channels join the service. Scripps networks are also available as free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels via Vizio’s WatchFree+, Samsung TV Plus, Tubi, Pluto TV, among other platforms.