After months of diminishing TV audiences and slumping tentpoles, Hollywood’s biggest night somewhat predictably turned out to be its least-watched in history, capping a turbulent award season of record ratings lows that saw the 93rd Oscars net fewer eyeballs than ever before.

While yesterday’s ceremony was a major victory for some in Hollywood, particularly actors and filmmakers of color, advertisers have been left to grapple with the worst-rated Academy Awards since it was first broadcast on TV in the 1950s: just 9.85 million people tuned in to the hostless ceremony, according to Nielsen’s early live-plus-same-day national returns.

While Nielsen’s seven-digit audience count is preliminary and likely to grow a bit once the Oscars’ time zone-adjusted ratings are calculated, this year’s show is all but certain to face a more than 50% audience drop compared to the dismal ratings of 2020. Last night scored a 1.9 rating in the coveted 18-49 demo in the fast national ratings, down more than 60% from last year, Variety reports.

Advertisers likely knew this would happen. Since the tweaked pandemic-era award season first kicked off last month, program after program has seen TV viewership figures plunge; the Grammys and the Golden Globes, two of the season’s biggest ratings draws, both recorded their weakest respective audiences of all time. (Traditionally, early-in-the-year award shows are a fairly accurate ratings litmus test for the televised events that follow.)

Even the Academy Awards themselves—held pre-pandemic in 2020—are coming off a historic low of 23.6 million viewers last year which, as of last night, makes it the Oscars’ second least-watched ceremony ever.

Those depressed ratings are reflected in ABC’s softened inventory price tag: This year, the network was asking for around $2 million per 30 seconds of air time, according to media buyers familiar with the process. That’s a significant slide from last year, when ABC raked in between $2.4 and $2.6 million per 30-second spot.

The below-average Oscars projections did not dissuade advertisers, many of whom still agree on the value of culturally relevant tentpole programming—events that remain some of TV’s most-viewed individual shows, even during audience droughts. ABC announced days before the Oscars that it had sold out of commercial air time, thanks in part to an influx of first-time advertisers that gave it ad breaks of both stalwarts and newcomers in a parallel to this year’s Super Bowl.

While some brands that appeared during last year’s telecast—such as Microsoft, Indeed and Molson Coors-owned Peroni—did not return last night, many major voices did.

Verizon made a major buy of seven 30- and 45-second commercials; Academy partner Cadillac opted to advertise its new Lyriq EV; AARP launched its first new brand campaign in three years; Corona and M&M’s re-ran existing creative; and a slew of rookie advertisers including Airbnb, Apartments.com and Grey Goose made their Oscars debut.

The ongoing pandemic hasn’t been kind to tentpole TV ratings, even dragging the Super Bowl to its lowest audience since 2007, but the persistent decline facing Hollywood award shows predates COVID-19 by several years.