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Debatable

“Joe Biden did a better job in the final debate on Thursday, according to a CNN Instant Poll of debate watchers [across all media outlets],” per CNN Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta. “Overall, 53% of voters who watched the debate said that Biden won the matchup, while 39% said that President Donald Trump did. Viewers once again said that Biden’s criticisms of Trump were largely fair (73% said they were fair, 26% unfair), and they split over whether Trump’s attacks on Biden were fair (50% said yes, 49% no).” Keep reading here.

Meanwhile:  A team-reported post at FiveThirtyEight serves up the results of a poll conducted in partnership with Ipsos: “On the whole, debate watchers were more impressed with both Biden and Trump’s performance than they were in the first debate: 76% thought the debate was ‘somewhat good’ or ‘very good.’ The share who thought Trump’s performance was ‘somewhat good’ or ‘very good’ jumped from one-third in the last debate to a little over half in this debate. Biden got higher marks, too, up from 60 percent to 69 percent.” Keep reading here.

The Sims

Speaking of FiveThirtyEight, it’s serving up yet another way to slice and dice its election simulations: “Want to test out our forecast and see what happens if Trump wins Florida or Biden wins Texas?” the data-obsessed site’s editors ask rhetorically (of course you do). “Well, now you can! We’ve built an interactive forecast that lets you explore the ways Trump or Biden could win the election.” Check it out here.

See also: “Fox News Poll: Trump gains in Ohio, Biden ahead in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,” per Fox News.

Plus: “Poll that predicted Trump win in 2016 finds him closing gap with Biden,” per the New York Post, a Fox News corporate cousin.

Cable views

Social video measurement service Tubular Labs is rolling out something it’s calling the Total Audience Ratings (TAR) system, which allows media makers/publishers/broadcasters and brands to get a lot more insight into their crossplatform video audiences—and their competitors’ crossplatform video audiences.

Speaking of competition, we asked Tubular to put TAR to the test to see how the leading cable news networks are doing with video online. This data—shared exclusively with Datacenter Weekly—is for the full month of September, and looks at a de-duplicated audience age 13+ in the U.S.:

• Across Facebook and YouTube, Fox News racked up 37.4 million unique viewers compared to CNN’s 28.6 million and MSNBC’s 13.8 million.

• Fox News is also tops in terms of sheer volume of content watched across the month, with 1.1 billion minutes total; MSNBC follows with 547.5 million minutes, and CNN with 384 million minutes.

The bottom line:  Fox News fans are consuming a lot of its video content online—not just on TV.

That’s the stuff

“While spending on experiences was the rage in recent years—sparking a number of retailers to rethink their central business strategies—COVID-19 has disrupted the trend, data from Deloitte’s holiday survey confirms,” per Bloomberg News (via Ad Age). “Average U.S. household spending this holiday season is expected to decrease 7% from 2019, with a sharp 34% drop in travel spending accounting for most of the decrease, according to Rod Sides, a Deloitte vice chairman.” Keep reading here.

Disaster recovery

You can now get your hands on “Marketing in the time of COVID-19,” Ad Age’s new (free) white paper offering a deep data dive into what’s happened to marketers, media and brands during the coronavirus pandemic. Ad Age Datacenter produced the report based on data and analysis from Kantar. Get facts and stats on how the pandemic has affected ad spending, social media, consumer behavior, sports marketing, retailing and advertising creative. Download it here. 

RGB

“In an age when everything is politicized, why not color NFL teams blue and red? That is what marketing data firm StatSocial has done with an analysis of the political leanings of the fan bases of every team,” E.J. Schultz writes in the latest installment of Ad Age’s NFL blog. Schultz calls our attention to a StatSocial chart titled “The Political Leanings of Every NFL Team’s Fans” shared by Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal on Twitter; see it here. Can you guess the bluest and reddest teams? (Spoiler: Yeah, probably.)

The upside of tough times

Ad Age Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson has authored “Downtime Opportunity,” a 56-page white paper that examines marketing, product and media innovation in the worst of times from the Great Depression to the great coronavirus pandemic. Conclusion: Economic downturns reset the table for marketers and media, creating new rules, opportunities and brands. The report is available as a free download for Ad Age Insider and Ad Age Datacenter subscribers (or for purchase by everyone else) at AdAge.com/downtime2020.

Click for the quick take:  “How marketing can thrive in the worst of times.”

Just briefly

•  “A powerful argument for wearing a mask, in visual form,” via The Washington Post.

• “Podcasting is becoming a data business,” per Quartz.

• “AT&T’s CEO predicts that millions more will cut the cord,” Bloomberg News reports (via Ad Age).

The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter.

Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Catherine Wolf.

This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.