Advertisers Best Friends: Fall & Football

Going into our second summer impacted by the pandemic, Advertisers and Media Executives had high hopes for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games airing a year later. With a lack of content produced in 2020 that would seemingly create a thirst for new, live content, NBC nor its sponsors and advertisers had foreseen a 42% decrease in viewership from the previous summer games reported by the Wall Street Journal. As audiences continue to fragment across said platforms the agencies and brands continue to search for the audiences they covet and hope to convert to customers.

Fear not, Football is back, and so is the Fall season! While the two compliment to drive the greatest media machine year over year, brands can once again regain their confidence in reaching the entire family as Football returns to Living Rooms and screens across the country. To highlight such seismic impact, the NFL far outreached its entertainment counterpart The Emmy’s, by more than doubling the viewership for the annual award show.

According to the Nielsen ratings from Sunday night, per Variety.com, revealed that “the Week 2 clash between the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs averaged 16.1 million viewers and received a 4.8 demo rating. By comparison, the Emmys drew 7.4 million viewers to CBS.”

Audiences are not just simply rebounding from last year. In fact, Monday Night Football earned its highest viewership in the last 8 years with 15.29 million viewers according to Nielsen, with another 800,000 watching the new program on ESPN 2 featuring the Manning Brothers. So, what does this mean for advertisers, brands and agencies looking to capitalize on the high concentration of American consumers?

Here are some key media stats from the league itself and what we think it means for advertisers…

·       100 million viewers tuned in during the three-day opening slate.

o   Nearly 25% of the country were receiving creative ads on their screens as they pre pare for the Fall and holiday season ahead.

·       The Week 1 average was 17.4 million viewers, up 7% from a season ago.

o   Audiences continue to concentrate, engage in mass, and yet have new platforms for consumption to reinforce their media budget.

·       232 billion total minutes consumed. The largest Week 1 total since 2016.

o   More creative ads were viewed by consumers than in the past 5 years, compounded with the NFL expanding their sponsorship categories to include liquor and gambling

·       NBC averaged 22.8 million viewers for its two games, an increase of 11% from last season

o   What did NBC do right with the NFL, and wrong for the Olympics? Likely nothing, but advertisers, brands and agencies should take notice of their concentrated audience, that then fragments throughout the week only to engage as a community during each game.