(Image credit: Lay’s)
By Jon Lafayette
Source: www.nexttv.com, January 2023

Spending off 8.1%

In 2022, iSpot measured 8 trillion TV ad impressions that generated $34.36 billion in national TV ad spend.

The impressions were down 3.5% and the spending was off 8.1% in a year challenged by cord-cutting, inflation and a weakening market.

“And yet traditional linear TV still delivered a massive amount of reach and engagement to advertisers: trillions of ad impressions, hundreds of thousands of new commercials, thousands of brands and hundreds of industries all found their way into the homes of viewers,” iSpot noted in a year-end report.

“Looking ahead to 2023, CTV is bound to reach new heights as ad inventory grows and brands turn to the channel to drive greater efficiency in TV budgets,” iSpot said. “The most successful TV advertisers will be those that lean into ad-first, cross-platform measurement for verification of audience reach, creative effectiveness and the business impact of ad investments.”

The top networks by share of ad impressions were CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News, ESPN, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Univision and Telemundo.

The top programs were sports: NFL games, college football games and NBA games. Following those were Good Morning America, men’s college basketball, Today, SportsCenter, Major League Baseball, The Young and the Restless and ABC World News Tonight.

The top spending brands were GEICO, Progressive, Toyota, Verizon, T-Mobile, Domino’s and Liberty Mutual.

The most likeable ads were for Chewy.com, Pet Smart, and Dawn.

“A wide swath of creative approaches rose to the top by likeability in 2022. Animals remained a tried-and-true way of appealing to mass audiences — as long as the animal characters seamlessly fit within the storyline and/or related to the brand,” the iSpot report said.

The funniest commercials all ran during the Super Bowl. Spots for Lay’s and Doritos also generated above-average scores for brand recognition and positive purchase intent.

Looking ahead to 2023, the report notes that “even as inflation concerns wane, recession fears are still weighing heavily on marketers as they look ahead to 2023. But where there’s risk, there’s also opportunity for brands. As some advertisers opt to pull back on TV spend in the new year, it creates opportunities for other brands — some of which may be completely new to TV advertising — to fill those gaps.” ■

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.