This year’s Super Bowl broke records both within audience levels and ad pricing. On average 111 million viewers watched the 2011 Super Bowl, besting the previous year’s then record audience of 106.5 million. This year’s audience growth of 4.2% is above the average 2.8% growth that event has seen since 1968 but is lower than the price increases on advertising.
For this year’s Super Bowl Fox sold 30-second spots at estimated prices between $2.8 million and $3 million, around 7% more than what CBS charged last year. Given the average reach of 111 million viewers or 53 thousand households, the effective CPM (eCPM) of the broadcast was round around $27 for viewers and $54 for households. This is actually close to the levels seen in 2001 but over double what they were in 1991.
The eCPM growth is even more noticeable when compared to the average paid for broadcast network primetime. Basically the difference between the two can be considered to be a premium paid for spot placements within Super Bowl. Just as one thousand impressions are worth (or priced) more on The New York Times rather than a lesser paper, the opportunity to air a spot on the Super Bowl has a unique value and an extra cost.
Besides simple brand status the essential reason for this “Super Premium” is that television viewing, while increasing overall during the last 20 years, has greatly fragmented so now there is less supply, and inherently greater demand, for any event that can consistently reach a large portion of the marketplace. No other singular live broadcast has the same draw as the Super Bowl. Besides status and reach, a third factor is engagements- the audience during the Super Bowl pays rapt attention during commercials breaks, further increasing the potential value of these message slots. Given these reasons it is easy to understand why the eCPM of the Super Bowl is double the average for broadcast primetime.
Of course it would only make sense to buy one of these placements if you’re certain about the message you’ll be sending, which opens up another debate about the “best” Super Bowl commercials. Ad Age has two interesting top 10 lists for the spots that were enjoyed or recalled the most. It is interesting to note that the three spots with the highest likeability (VW Darth Vader Passat, Bridgestone Beaver, E-Trade Baby Sneezing Cat) are not on the list for best recall.
Is it more important to be liked rather than remembered? Most sensible marketers would probably prefer the latter, but a likability, or an emotional connection, can be a strong force for larger ticket items or premium brands. I also think that the VW Darth Vader spot received a lot of attention post the Super Bowl, and it has been shared and viewed online a lot more since then so perhaps its recall levels and brand reinforcement to VW are now higher. Another perspective is that the top recalled spots (Doritos Pug, Budweiser Cowboy, Doritos Office Licking) have been criticized for using cheap puns which don’t build lasting connections with audiences, but perhaps this is what you need when you’re selling low-priced items like chips and beer to less mature customers. I think there is a reason that Budweiser has bought the first commercial spot placement in the Super Bowl for years, and repeated a very similar messaging style. Both the Budweiser and VW messaging style have their place, and should simply be subjectively applied depending on the marketing strategy.
Sometimes the big just keep getting bigger. This has traditionally been the case with Univision and their latest online moves are pretty big. The company already ranks as the top U.S. Hispanic property, almost double the users of the closest competitor.
Summer recently ended and with it finished the biggest season for the U.S. Box Office. This time period is generally considered to run between the first weekend of May and the end of Labor Day weekend. While this spans only a third of the year this summer season contributes close to half of the total annual U.S. box office. Unfortunately the amount of tickets sold this summer was the least since 1997. Based on total gross revenues however, this summer was above 2009 by a scant 0.2%. Comparing the entire year of 2010 so far to 2009 (up through the end of week 36) revenues are up a more decent 4%. The better cumulative performance is thanks mostly to Avatar, Alice in Wonderland and other movies that drew strong crowds during the first 17 weeks of the year.
Last week Steve Jobs presented a new version of the Apple TV device and announced that it would stream only rented content and that TV episodes would be available at a lower price point of $0.99. With these changes Apple addressed weak points in its video strategy, which had caused lackluster sales. However, while consumers may be pleased it seems that the lower price ponit is a point of contention with the television networks. So far only ABC and FOX have signed on to Apple TV, and many speculate that ABC did so since since Steve Jobs is on the board of directors for Disney while in FOX got the OK since Rupert Murdoch is interested in working with Apple on iPad projects that support Newscorp’s publishing business.
The Emmys broadcast last Sunday on NBC attracted 13.5 million viewers, making it the largest non-sports audience so far in 2010, at least since the airing of FOX’s American Idol finale on May 26. This is also the largest audience the Emmys has had in four years but it’s still over a quarter less than what the awards attracted 10 years ago.
Two telenovelas have made waves recently in the U.S., for each of the major Hispanic broadcasters. ¿Dónde está Elisa?, based on a Chilean soap of the same name, aired on Telemundo at 10 p.m. between March and August and improved the ratings for the time period 30% over the previous telenovela, Los Victorinos. Elisa even managed to tie or beat Univision programming during two evenings during its run, a pretty fair feat in primetime for Telemundo.
Last week the fourth season of Mad Men premiered and while the episode was entertaining as always (I am a fan) the ratings were a mere 5% above last season’s premiere. This growth was also significantly lower than previous season premieres: 167% from Season 1 to 2, and 44% from Season 2 to 3. Also of concern is that the 18-49 demo rating remained flat at 0.9 ratings points or approximately 1.2 million viewers.
Facebook has been in the news a lot lately, sometimes making good headlines, other times bad, and still other times it’s gotten ugly. The good news was actually great- Facebook announced that it had reached 500 million registered users. This is especially impressive since two years ago they had only 100 million users. The 300% growth has mostly resulted from expansion into older demos and within foreign markets. At the same time MySpace has actually been losing users.
Although Facebook membership has grown as a whole, the bad news is that certain key segments are shrinking. Inside Facebook reported a decline for active 18- to 44-year-old U.S. users for the month of June. This could be a sign of “Facebook fatigue” by early adopters that have outgrown the site. Perhaps un-coincidentally, the American Customer Satisfaction Index also reported that Facebook is perceived to to offer poor service due to issues related with privacy, spam and functionality.
Another bit of bad news hit Facebook when a businessman said that he had an old contract signed by Mark Zuckerberg granting him a majority stake in the company. While one Facebook lawyer said that they were “unsure” if a contract had been signed, Zuckerberg later clarified in an ABC interview that “…we are quite sure that we did not sign a contract that says that they have any right or ownership over Facebook.”
All of these news stories coincided with the release of a new trailer for “The Social Network,” an “unauthorized” movie about Facebook that comes out in October. The movie is directed by David Fincher whose previous work (Seven, The Game, Fight Club, etc.) is dark and largely of society. Unsurprisingly the trailer paints an ugly portrait, not just of Zuckerberg but also of social networks.
The World Cup is almost into the second round but the real competition might be taking place behind the cameras, between the broadcasters. In the U.S., two companies have television broadcast rights: Disney (ABC and ESPN) has the English-language rights and Univision (Univision, Telefutura and Galavision) has the Spanish-language rights.
It was expected that Unvision would do well in the ratings since their Latino audience is generally regarded as being more fanatical about soccer than the “gringo” viewers of ABC or even ESPN audience. This proved to be the case during the inaugural match when Univision drew 5.6 million viewers, almost double the audience of ESPN. However, Univision did not beat ESPN during any of the following seven matches, and got especially trounced during the England versus USA match which was attracted 10.8 million viewers on ABC; the largest audience for any U.S. World Cup match since 1994 .
Two weeks ago ABC broadcast the final episode of Lost, a popular show that whose ratings I’ve been posting about every now and then. The last episode tallied 13.5 million viewers, which was more viewers than the season’s premiere (something that hasn’t happened since the first season) and the most viewers for any episode within two years.
As I’ve noted before, Lost consolidated a strong fan base during the first season, which led to a strong second season premiere. Over the course of that and later seasons however, the show steadily “lost” ratings. This could be attributed to a number of factors including its convoluted plot line, the 12 week hiatus the show took in the middle of the third season, the writers’ strike in 2007 which led to short fourth season, etc.
The show hit a ratings bottom in the twelth episode of the fifth season which had only 8.29 million viewers. The final sixth season saw a significant ratings bounce back, probably since a lot of viewers were interested in how the series was going to conclude.
Another factor that may have affected Lost’s downward ratings was overall viewership at ABC. The network was strong during the 2004-2005 season when Lost, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy all premiered. Since then the network has had a few more hits, notably Dancing with the Stars, but has yet to produce another critically acclaimed drama. This season ABC did break out Modern Family this season, which I believe will run at least three seasons, but the “alphabet network” also lost the most viewers, both in general and in key advertising demos. It seems critical that ABC find some new strong shows during the 2010-2011 season.
