A study from iSpot.tv revealed that on broadcasts of three major sports leagues over the past year, there were “significant variances between the average commercial minutes on which most advertisers trade TV and the actual audience for individual commercials,” according to Jack Neff of AD AGE. For some advertisers, this can “mean millions of dollars of free audience, which some are intentionally using arbitrage to get.” But others get “shortchanged by equal amounts.” According to iSpot, the second-leading NFL advertiser -- which iSpot “declined to identify” except to say it was an insurance brand -- “came up more than 100 million impressions short in delivery of spot-level audience compared to average viewing minutes last year.” Among the 15 most active advertisers across NFL, NBA and MLB broadcasts, six saw “meaningful under-delivery of spot-level impressions compared to the average-minutes metric.” Neff notes it “all comes down to when during a game ads run.” The NFL insurance advertiser that “got shortchanged had 31% of its ads appear in commercial pods 22 through 27 late in games,” compared to an “average of 15% for the 15 advertisers studied.” The “potentially big divergence” between average and individual spot minutes in sports is “getting more important all the time as sports take an ever bigger share of TV dollars and sports rights fees soar.” Industry execs say that the patterns “suggest that different game parts should command different prices,” but that is “generally not the way inventory is sold” (AD AGE, 6/27).
