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Measuring March Madness, silver screen ad attention and more: Datacenter Weekly
Also: Hallmark Media signs a deal with EDO, and macroeconomic news in a nutshell
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NCAA players from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Kansas in the 2022 tournament's championship game (spoiler alert: Kansas won).
Credit:
Getty Images via Bloomberg LP
New study shows cinema ads get higher attention
“A study commissioned by National CineMedia from attention measurement firm Lumen Research, in collaboration with Dentsu, shows attention scores for ads that run before movies beat TV, connected TV, social and digital ads by as much as four to seven times,” Ad Age’s Jack Neff reports.
The details: “For 15-second ads, for example, cinema ads had an attention score of 72, based on the percentage of the audience viewing them and how long they are viewed,” Neff explains. “This compares with an attention score between 15 and 17 for linear and connected TV and 11 and 12 social platforms from prior testing by Lumen and its partner TVision.”
Essential context: “The research comes as advertisers place a growing emphasis on how much attention people pay to ads, and groups such as the IAB and Advertising Research Foundation launch initiatives to develop standards and study the role of attention in advertising,” Neff notes.
Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell
• “Jobless claims tumble to 192,000 and show no sign of rising U.S. layoffs,” MarketWatch reports
• “US wholesale inflation fell last month on lower food costs,” per ABC News
• “Mortgage rates tumble in the wake of bank failures,” CNBC reports
• “One of the best ways to figure out what the Fed will do next is to look at regional bank stocks,” per CNBC
Previously: US ad employment fell by 1,000 jobs in February
Don’t miss: Layoffs and budget cuts—tracking economic moves and news
March Madness TV by the numbers
Inscape, the data subsidiary of smart TV maker Vizio, is out with fresh data surrounding basketball as March Madness ramps up:
• From Jan. 1 through March 13, basketball—men’s and women’s college ball and the NBA—accounted for nearly 3.5% of all time spent watching TV. Over the same period, 2% of all TV watch time went to men’s college basketball.
• Watch for those numbers to rise as March Madness gets ... madder: From March 15 through April 4, 2022, the men’s tournament was the No. 1 thing on TV, accounting for 5.32% of all TV watch time. (By comparison, the women’s tournament accounted for 0.63%.)
Essential context: Vizio is itself betting big on March Madness this year. Today it’s launching its own college-ball-themed show, “3 Pointers,” a branded entertainment miniseries starring Casey Webb (of Travel Channel’s “Man vs. Food”) and produced in partnership with sportsbook BetMGM. The show is, of course, getting heavy promotion on Vizio’s home screen.
See also: Women’s March Madness ad inventory sells out
Hallmark Media signs measurement deal with EDO
“Hallmark Media has signed a deal with EDO to measure how consumers respond to its programming, focused on Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries scripted series and tentpole movie events,” Ad Age’s Jack Neff reports.
The details: “EDO analyzes real-time consumer search response to ads as they appear in programming,” Neff explains. “While this can gauge how well the creative is working, it also allows like-for-like comparisons of how the same advertising performs on different networks or shows.”
Essential context: “Advertisers aren’t likely to incorporate EDO data into transactions as currency, but it will help prove out the effectiveness of advertising on the networks, said Casey Gould, senior VP ad sales and advanced advertising at Hallmark Media.
See also: Media measurement uncertainty—tracking TV, social and digital
Just briefly
• “How TikTok is talking with brands and agencies about the threat of a ban,” from Ad Age
• “Wall Street regulator proposes new hacking, data and market resiliency rules,” per Reuters
• “AT&T Vendor Data Breach Exposed 9 Million Customer Accounts,” CNET reports
• “Dutch court finds Facebook misused data in class action suit,” Reuters reports
Previously: The latest data marketing news from Fox, Roku, Best Buy and Truthset: Datacenter Weekly (March 10 edition)
Ad Age Best Places to Work 2023
In his introduction to Ad Age’s Best Places to Work 2023 package, Ad Age Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson writes,
The best practices at the Best Places to Work turn out to be pretty straightforward:
Fair pay. Solid benefits.
Recruit and retain a diverse workforce. Keep staffing levels adequate so team members and teams can do their best work.
Provide good training and keep employees in the loop on how the business is doing. Tilt work-life balance a bit more toward life.
Easy to say—and hard to do. Ad Age Best Places to Work 2023 honors 50 companies for a job well done last year amid the challenges of a tight talent pool, uncertain economy and ongoing effects of the pandemic.
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 Joy R. Lee.
