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October 29, 2024

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Six Biggest Content Giants Set For Major Spending Landmark – Report

October 29, 2024 2:31am

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'Shogun': Disney was the biggest spender of the six.Katie Yu/FX

The world’s six top content giants will hit a major spending landmark this year, according to research from Ampere Analysis.

Disney, Comcast, Google, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Netflix and Paramount will spend a forecast $126B on the content landscape this year, Ampere said. For the first time, this will account for more than half (50.6%) of the entire landscape, up from 46.8% in 2020 and 47.5% last year.

Disney is projected to remain the largest contributor to the global landscape, accounting for 14.4% of market share, or $35.8B spend, which was buttressed by the full acquisition of Hulu from Comcast at the start of this year. Comcast is in second place with a projected spend of $24.5B, followed by Google ($17.6B), WBD ($16.8B), Netflix ($16B) then Paramount ($15.1B). The latter two are set to swap positions this year as Netflix pushes hard on originals while Paramount slows.

 

If Media Trust Levels Are So Low, Why Record Political Ad Spend?

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October, 2024

Trust in TV advertising or in social media advertising in this Presidential election year can yield a fuzzy profile. And yet more money -- advertising-wise -- is being spent than ever before, especially for TV.

It seems not much has changed when it comes to the trust level of social-media platform X since Elon Musk took over the platform formerly known as Twitter in late 2022.

The percentage of U.S. adults that trust the social-media platform “to do what is right” has been generally at or under the 40% mark for both Republican and Democrat affiliated adults.

Around February of this year, all adults -- whether Republicans or Democrats -- were at the 39% to 40% trust level, according to a survey by Morning Consult Intelligence.

But currently Democrat-minded adults have slipped to around 31%, while Republican-minded adults have remained around 40%.

Digging deeper, the Pew Research Center said that in late 2023, only 21% of Republican X users felt the social-media platforms were “mostly bad for American democracy,” while Republican political-associated users in 2021 registered a 60% thumbs-down number.

How much money is X now getting in terms of political advertising? We have no idea. 

But looking at local TV newscasts, we know there has been -- as always during this kind of political season -- nonstop airing of political ads.

Just a week ago, Gallup said Americans' trust in media -- newspapers, television and radio -- remains low. We can assume this means all content -- politically focused TV news stories and advertising.

Only 31% say that they have a “great deal” or “fair amount of trust in the media.”

Since 2016  -- the year Donald Trump first ran for public office -- not much has changed with regard to the overall numbers, with only a 32% confidence level.

This year, it breaks down with Republican-minded users at 12%, Democrat-minded users at a 54% level and independents with a 27% score.

At the same time, there is record political advertising this year -- up nearly 30% from 2020 to around $12.3 billion, according to eMarketer's projections.

Does the sharper rise in dollars help to make up for the ever-declining “trust” level in traditional media -- especially TV, which receives the bulk of political advertising -- around $6 billion?

And if not, what is the alternative for this messaging going forward if both social media and legacy media are not really working all that well?

 

For Netflix, Gen AI Isn't What You Think - A 'Hype Cycle' To Come?

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 24, 2024

Can generative AI help make better TV and movies for streaming and linear TV? Absolutely. 

But don't look for AI to help companies like Netflix choose better TV shows -- or replace creators. The latter is an obvious concern for TV and movie producers everywhere now that Gen AI has moved into the mainstream of many businesses.

At a recent industry event, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said: “I look at Gen AI as a tool for creators to create content, not for Netflix to create instead of creators.” 

For Sarandos, the jury is still out. He is not exactly an enthusiastic endorser -- yet. “If it doesn't [work] I think it's going to be part of somewhere in the hype cycle of what it is right now,” he says.

Well, major hype can be found everywhere in entertainment. So it has company. 

Look further to a more natural area of creativity, says Sarandos -- video games, which Netflix continues to play around with. “In some ways, it’s going to be a training ground for storytellers and creators, which is great. In other ways, it’s a way that people kill time,” he said.

In some ways Netflix still seems to be a conservative operation. While it probably had the wherewithal to bid and compete for major season-long TV content -- like the NFL -- it has decided not to go for the pricey, potentially much less profitable content that would have extended its reach

Instead, it is testing some key end-of-the-regular-season games: Two special Christmas Day games.

Sports may not necessarily be an all-or-nothing deal for a legacy TV network or digital-first video distributors or platforms.

For Netflix, it seems to pursue some uniqueness -- whether it's a new TV series, movies, an unscripted or live competition show or something else.

Sarandos realizes you can't follow all media and entertainment behaviors by modern consumers: “You can be careful not to get too distracted by chasing everything that people are doing," he says.

 

Intent Matters, Especially for Healthcare Marketers

• by Adam Cohen , 2 hours ago

Intent matters, and advertisers need to fully grasp the needs of both patients and healthcare providers at precise moments of their health journey. For us to understand this, we need to know the intent of their search, visitation and actions they are taking.

According to Forrester Research, more than 85% of companies harnessing intent data have achieved business benefits.  It seems obvious, then, that marketers would harness this intent data to understand audience behaviors and moments that are ideal to engage. The challenge is, in health, such granular consumer intent information is not automatically tracked by mainstream syndication and research tools. This is the case even despite the increasing need to meet consumers more squarely in the oft-shifting landscapes of their healthcare journeys.

Healthcare decisioning involves a much more complex journey that can evolve as individual patients learn to navigate their own changing conditions. Chronic conditions especially call for keen attention to their shifting nature, with marketers needing to demonstrate an understanding of the distinct audience journey that wormholes between symptom presentation, diagnosis, treatment decisioning and overall condition management.

Not only is the audience journey in health nonlinear, it’s marked by much higher stakes than other industries. Health marketers can’t afford to squander the nanoseconds available to make an impression; getting it wrong isn’t just digital waste. Getting it wrong is a huge missed opportunity to provide critical information the consumer needs at this exact moment of time.

A misplaced health message can cause confusion, missing the chance to educate patients and HCPs and potentially slow a patient’s path to meaningful action. As such, health marketers need to have media planning tools available that match this level of complexity in their operating sophistication.

In health, we need to be able to uncover digital destinations audiences are visiting, and to know the purpose of those visits with more clarity. Why? Because understanding the intent of a website visit allows us connect digital destinations across the healthcare journey — to the mindset and overall needs of particular audiences, in each distinct moment of time as patient needs evolve.

We need to get the right messages to audiences in the moment it matters most. We need to be able to find the patient who is waiting for their test results. Or we need to be able to appear in niche communities where those with shared diagnoses are supporting one another. Imagine how much more we could help healthcare audiences if we place more tailored, relevant and useful content for them each step of the way.

According to the 2023 McKinsey Future of Wellness Survey, 67% of consumer respondents found health and wellness media within the healthcare journey to be helpful and interesting. The marketplace need, accordingly, is to improve media placements at each journey inflection point.

Net-net: Opportunities abound for brands that intelligently harness data to meet audiences across their healthcare journeys.

Today, marketers rely on syndicated research tools to look at where audiences are going. There are limitations, though, with many of these tools when it comes to understanding why audiences got to where they were going in the first place. Instead, we must engineer better tools to rise to the occasion of meeting healthcare consumers where and when they need empowering health content.

Spanish-Language TV Scores Major Brand Engagement Gains

 Should local-direct businesses add Spanish TV programs to add a lift to their monthly revenue gains? Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

Spanish-Language TV Scores Major Brand Engagement Gains

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 9, 2024

TV commercials on Spanish-language TV networks have been 31% more effective in online brand engagement than those on English-language TV over the past 12 months, according to EDO Ad EnGage.

In addition, Spanish-language messaging is up 24% higher than in the preceding 12-month period. 

These results came from 1.2 million airings from September 2023 through August 2024, EDO says -- coming from 709 brands resulting in a total of 377 billion impressions. EDO looks at real-time online engagement minutes after a TV commercial has aired. 

Walmart posted the best effective result for an ad called “Being That Grandma,” scoring 1,036% higher than the average commercial on Spanish-language TV during the period. 

Overall brand engagement effectiveness witnessed the big brick-and-mortar/online scoring 223% above average. Amazon Prime was at a leading 340%, topping all retailers. 

In the insurance category, Aflac took top honors for a brand engagement boost via Spanish-language TV -- 341%. This was followed by State Farm at 120%. Personal care brands had Golo (682%) and Nutrafol (643%) as number one and two. 

Food/beverage category showed Spam (702%) and Dr Pepper (652%) taking top results. Major non-luxury automobile brands showed Honda and Buick as number one and two. Pharmaceutical brands OmniPod (143%) and Shingrix (117%) as best.

Looking at specific non-sports categories, news/information content scored the best in engagement -- up 61% -- over English-language TV. For its specific creatives, Pandora posted 633% lift, followed by Spam (500%) and Golo (438%).

Commercials in entertainment programming generated a 36% boost in engagement. Beverage brand Monster scored 1,043% from its “Work From Home” creative.

In the movie category, there was an overall 20% lift overall lift for brands in engagement. Walmart had the strongest result, at 700% for its 'Hello Fall' creative execution. 

Live sports proved to be perhaps the strongest category -- especially European football. Top ten games over the 12-month period posted anywhere from 276% to 751% lift for brands over other Spanish-language platforms. 

Some of the biggest performers for their specific creatives included Marriott (360%), Secret (538%) and Dove (196%).

Automotive: Automakers Estimated TV Spending Rises in Q3

 

automotive

Automakers Estimated TV Spending Rises in Q3

• by Tanya Gazdik , Today

Automakers estimated TV spending was up 18.3% year over year for the third quarter. 

The number rose to $541.2 million compared to $457.3 million in the same quarter in 2023. Year-to-date spending was flat at $1.7 billion compared to the same period in 2023, according to iSpot.tv.

Household TV ad impressions were down 14.3% year-over-year to 73.9 billion compared to 86.2 billion in the same period last year. Year-to-date impressions were down 12.7% year-over-year, 210.2 billion compared to 240.9 billion 

The top five brands by estimated national TV ad spending for the quarter were Toyota ($61 million), Hyundai ($43.5 million), Chevrolet ($39.5 million), Honda ($38.7 million) and Ram Trucks ($32.7 million), according to iSpot.tv.

The NFL accounted for 42% of the industry’s total outlay for the quarter, and it was No. 1 for spend for all of the top five automakers, especially Honda, which allocated 72% of its Q3 budget to games. 

“Sports were an even bigger part of automaker advertising than normal in Q3, thanks to the excitement around the Summer Olympics in Paris,” said Stuart Schwartzapfel, EVP, media partnerships at iSpot. “But along with big-ticket sports ad placements, these brands are still finding ways to reach consumers during syndicated and daytime shows, plus streaming programming as well to both move remaining 2024 inventory and promote 2025 vehicles.”

While all of the top five brands activated around college football, Ram Trucks and Honda leaned in the most: College football ranked second and third, respectively, for their total quarterly spend. Additionally, four of the top five brands invested in the 2024 Paris Olympics (Ram Trucks was the outlier), according to iSpot.tv.

The top five brands by share of automaker household TV ad impressions for the third quarter were Toyota (11.86%), Hyundai (8.56%), Nissan (6.64%), Lexus (6.55%) and Ford (6.16%).

The top five brands by share of voice on streaming for the quarter were Ram Trucks (10.63%), Toyota (9.28%), Jeep (9.26%), Hyundai (8.83%) and Nissan (6.01%).

Stellantis-owned brands including Ram Trucks and Jeep put a greater emphasis on streaming over national linear from a reach Share of Voice standpoint in the third quarter. The brands were No. 1 and No. 3 by share of streaming reach, despite being outside the top five by national linear TV ad reach (where they ranked No. 9 and No. 12, respectively), according to iSpot.tv. 

The top programs for automakers by share of household TV ad impressions were NFL (7.57%), 2024 Paris Olympics (5.76%), College Football (5.67%), MLB (4.64%) and Primetime in Paris: The Olympics (3.57%).

Outside of sports, shows with some of the biggest year-over-year increases in automaker impressions included "My Lottery Dream Home” (+67% vs Q3 2023), “Modern Family” (+52%) and “America's Morning Headquarters” (+46%).  

The top networks for automakers by share of household TV ad impressions in third quarter were NBC (16.93%), ABC (5.53%), CBS (5.51%), Fox (5.18%) and ESPN (4.15%), according to iSpot.tv.

NBC was the top TV network for automaker impressions in Q3, largely thanks to the Olympics and NFL/college football games. And it was the only network in the top five that saw an increase in industry impressions (+82%) vs Q3 2023. Other networks that saw increased reach year-over-year included UniMas (+33%), VH1 (+30%) and NewsNation (+25%). 

The most-seen automaker ads by share of household TV ad impressions for the quarter was Hyundai: Summer: Add More Joy (3.88%), Jeep: Make the Most (2.22%), Volkswagen: Hot Dog (1.78%), Chevrolet: For Summer Adventures (1.70%) and Infiniti: Once Upon a Time (1.67%).

Top automaker ads by likeability among the top 20 most-seen ads were Volkswagen: An American Love Story (+15.5% more likeable than the Q3 automotive norm), Ram Trucks: The Calling: Sparks (+8.4%), Genesis: Feel Every Detail (+8.3%), Lexus: Free (+6.3%) and Nissan: The Ultimate Connection (+5.3%), according to iSpot.tv.

As part of iSpot's creative assessment survey, likeability measures an ad's ability to appeal to viewers, based on results from the survey prompt “I like this ad.” Positive Purchase Intent is the share of creative assessment survey respondents that indicated they were "more" or "much more" likely to purchase a product or service after seeing an ad.

The top automaker ads by positive purchase intent among the top 20 most-seen ads wer Genesis: Feel Every Detail (62% positive purchase intent), GMC: The Time Has Come (55%), Mercedes-Benz: Make Your Dreams Come True (52%), Genesis: Illuminated (52%) and Ram Trucks: The Calling: Sparks (51%). according to iSpot.tv.

Genesis’ “Feel Every Detail” was a third quarter winner, ranking third by likability and first for positive purchase intent. The ad eschewed typical automaker ad formats (that often rely on voice overs or on-screen text to hype models and various features), and instead focused on sleek visuals and an upbeat soundtrack to engage audiences successfully: 32% of surveyed viewers cited the visual scenes as the “single best thing” about the ad, while 13% favored the music above all else. 

Commentary: Winning The Mom Vote Could Determine Who Wins the Presidency

 

Commentary

Winning The Mom Vote Could Determine Who Wins the Presidency

• by Maria Bailey , Columnist, 4 hours ago

Women are the largest demographic of voters, and the majority of women are mothers.

According to the 2020 US Census Bureau  there are more than 168 million women in the U.S., and according to the Chamber of Mothers, the majority -- 85 million -- are mothers.The US Census Bureau post-2020 election statistics noted that there were 120 million women registered to vote, and that voter turnout showed the number of women voters dominated the number of male voters—82 million compared to 72 million. This is a strong indication that voting moms will play a pivotal role in who will become president in 2024.

BSM Media recently 500 surveyed moms across the U.S. about the upcoming presidential election.

Issues moms care about

The surveyed mothers were clear about the issues at the top of the list for them: the economy/inflation, border security, and women’s rights, followed closely by reproductive rights and education. The greatest number of respondents put the economy as their number-one issue. It is not a surprise that as the chief money manager of the household, moms care about the economy when inflation concerns have hit families hard. And, of course, women’s rights are undeniably a top concern.”

A second tier of concerns include healthcare, gun control, and human rights. The two areas tied for being of least concern to moms: COVID-19 and legalization of marijuana.

Characteristics moms want the next president to have

When asked to rank what quality is the most important in a president, surveyed moms said primarily the person should be a problem solver. The qualities that rank in order after that are intelligence, honesty, and being ethical.

The median tier of characteristics that moms care about include being accepting of all people, someone who follows the law, and having respect globally.

The least important characteristics that received votes were being creative, having a sense of humor and being female.

Sources moms rely on for political content

Respondents said they obtain information about candidates from websites (64%), articles online (60%), and conversations with neighbors, friends and family (49%), followed by TV news (45%). Thirty percent of respondents lean on discussions with other moms.

Moms consult social media platforms to evaluate candidates and to research political issues, and 46% share political information, content or images. Newspapers and Facebook ranked almost equally as sources consulted at 26%.

Podcasts led the list ahead of all social platforms, at over 27%. Moms use social media sites for political information: Facebook (26%), Instagram (22%), TikTok (19%), followed by YouTube (17%) and X (16%). Private Facebook groups hold some sway with moms as well. Lesser used platforms include Reddit, Twitch, and Telegram. And TV ads were picked by just 12%.

Moms do their homework by researching the issues and policies that align with their values. Because they are a crucial demographic of voters, candidates should consider how to meet moms where they are and target the issues that matter to them.

Other Interesting Point

• 76% of moms discuss politics with their children, demonstrating their commitment to educating and involving the next generation in the political process.
• A childless candidate is OK, according to almost 70% of moms surveyed.
• More than half of respondents have unfriended someone on social media because of their political views.
• The candidate’s age is important to 45% of the moms surveyed.
• 83% of respondents will not be going to a political event in support of a candidate this year.
• More than 70% said that the vice presidential candidate is very important or somewhat important to their decision.
• Celebrity endorsements of candidates are not important to 90% of respondents.

United State moms coined “soccer moms” were credited with electing Bill Clinton to office in 1993. We will soon see if the impact of the mom vote will carry Trump or Harris into the White House.