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Marketers are playing catch-up with their holiday TV commercial campaigns post-election
Also: Leading National Advertisers 2024 Disney update, top brands for baby boomers, Paramount-Nielsen measurement standoff continues, macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell
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A scene from a festive Starbucks TV commercial.
Credit:
Starbucks
What’s up (and down) with the nation’s top advertisers
Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2024 ranks the top 200 U.S. advertisers and has profiles of the top 50. Total U.S. spending for the 200 biggest advertisers rose a modest 2.5% in 2023, with increases at 122 marketers and spending cuts at 78.
This just in: On Thursday, Walt Disney Co. disclosed in its annual filing that its worldwide ad spending fell 4.7% to $6.1 billion in the fiscal year ended September 2024 “due to a decrease in theatrical marketing costs.” See Ad Age Datacenter’s updated Disney profile, available to Ad Age All Access subscribers.
Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell
• “US weekly jobless claims fall; unemployment rolls shrink,” Reuters reports
• “US Producer Prices Rise, Risking Pressure in Fed’s Favored Gauge,” from Bloomberg News
• “Mortgage demand drops to its lowest level since July, as interest rates return to summer highs,” per CNBC
• “Mortgage Rate Predictions: The Aftermath of a Fed Rate Cut and the Election,” from CNET
ICYMI: Ad business gained 500 jobs in October as overall US employment growth slowed
Post-election, TV advertisers are playing catch-up with holiday campaigns
The ad-soaked political campaign season didn’t just leave media consumers weary, it affected the ability of brands to reach TV viewers with holiday campaigns. New data from TV measurement company iSpot.tv, shared exclusively with Datacenter Weekly, shows that holiday-themed national TV commercial airings dropped significantly from Oct. 1-Nov. 5, 2023, vs. Oct. 1-Nov. 5, 2024.
In that measurement window last year, iSpot tracked 108,972 holiday-themed national TV commercial airings.
In that same window this year, iSpot tracked just 62,093 holiday-themed national TV commercial airings.
That said, now that political campaigns have stopped snatching up all the best TV inventory, some marketers are playing a game of catch-up.
Walmart, for instance, had 3,345 holiday-themed TV commercial airings in the Nov. 6-10 measurement window this year—vs. 3,050 in the same window last year.
Top 5 brands gaining attention from baby boomers
“Apple tops the newest Ad Age-Harris Poll Boomer brand tracker, which ranks brands that made significant progress in gaining attention from boomers in the third quarter of 2024,” Ad Age’s Erika Wheless reports. “The poll focuses on brands gaining notice from people ages 59 to 77.”
More details: “Other brands cracking the top five are Shutterfly, The Wall Street Journal, Mattress Firm and Hyatt Hotels,” Wheless adds.
Essential context: “Published quarterly, the Ad Age-Harris Poll rankings are sourced from The Harris Poll’s daily brand tracking tool, QuestBrand, to identify companies with the greatest quarter-over-quarter increase in equity among specific age cohorts—that is, how much a generation’s perception of these brands is changing from quarter to quarter.”
The Paramount-Nielsen measurement standoff continues
“It’s been over a month since Paramount’s contract with Nielsen expired, leaving the media giant without the measurement company’s data amid a dispute over renewal terms,” Ad Age’s Parker Herren reports. “Advertisers and media buyers are caught in the middle of the standoff, grappling with the sudden shift to dealmaking with Paramount on VideoAmp’s big data set. Media buyers who spoke with Ad Age had differing views on the readiness of buying using VideoAmp at the scale needed.”
More details: “Buy-side complaints have apparently escalated to the point where Nielsen’s CEO, Karthik Rao, sent a letter to clients on Nov. 11 addressing the ‘unfortunate turbulence’,” Herren notes.
Essential context: “Rao’s letter was cause for alarm for some media buyers, including one who said it illustrated a larger disparity between Nielsen and Paramount than they’d anticipated,” Herren adds. “The buyer, who spoke with Ad Age on condition of anonymity, said that while the transition from Nielsen to VideoAmp with Paramount was initially smooth, it has increasingly burdened agencies with managing data from both measurement companies for clients, which isn’t sustainable long-term.”
Just briefly
• “23andMe customer? Here’s what to know about the privacy of your genetic data,” from CBS News
• “AI in ad tech—how GPTs are showing up in programmatic ad buying platforms,” from Ad Age
• “Nearly half of AI data centers may not have enough power by 2027,” TechCrunch reports
• “The mountaineers and hikers collecting data in extreme environments that scientists can’t reach,” from the BBC
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 Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee.
