Premium Streamers' TV Marketing Spend, Value Drops 18%

• by Wayne Friedman , 4 hours ago

Premium streaming platforms have slowed down their national TV marketing spending for the first five months of 2024 -- down 18% to $216.1 million in paid advertising/promotional value, according to estimates from EDO Ad EnGage.

 

This comes amid a maturing streaming marketplace looking for financial savings to achieve consistent profitability, including more modest TV production expenses and content acquisition costs.

 

Total national TV airings were down 8% to 79,240 airings (85,670 airings in 2023), with impressions also down -- 9% to 31.9 billion (vs. 35.2 billion the previous year).

 

EDO says its total search engagement volume metric (the increase in online engagement activity in the minutes after a single TV advertisement or promotion, airing from a streaming platform) was at 25,300 -- down from 26,390 a year ago.

 

Legacy TV network-owned streaming services continue to use a hefty amount of their TV network inventory for promotion. 

 

Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max is the leader at $33.5 million in advertising/promotion, coming from 15,640 airings. (A year before, Max came in at $39 million with 20,300 airings)

 

Paramount Global’s Paramount+ also used its sister cable networks for promotional gains -- $27.0 million in paid ad/promotional value and 10,520 airings. 

 

Disney Bundle was at $31.7 million and 7,350 airings. For other Disney streamers' campaigns, Disney+ came in at $13.8 million (1,860 airings), with Hulu at $7.7 million (7,000 airings) and Hulu + Live TV at $3.2 million (2,170 airings).

 

Those bigger paid advertising streaming marketers: Amazon Prime Video, $31.1 million (7,160 airings). Apple TV+ was at $3.54 million (1,790 airings).

 

One of the biggest declines in activity was seen with Fox’s Tubi -- a FAST network -- which was at $1.2 million in value (214 airings). A year ago during the same time period, Tubi came in at $23.1 million (8,780 airings).

 

Among the big premium streamers, NBCUniversal’s Peacock remains one of the least active marketers at $1.02 million (535 airings) versus $1.4 million (396 airings) in 2023.