• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 8, 2005

Marketers who probe have come to realize that when it comes to how well their ads are placed in their TV advertising buys, the networks do not treat all advertisers equally. That same rule appears to apply to the networks' biggest television events: the Super Bowl, the Oscars and the Grammy Awards, according to an analysis conducted by Media IQ, a New York-based firm that audits and monitors the performance of media buying agencies for big advertisers. "Despite declining ratings, these three marquee events hold great value for advertisers. In fact, 70 percent of the advertisers are the same companies year-in, year-out," said Brian Cauley, a partner in Media IQ. However, when the firm analyzed how equitably the networks doled out coveted "A" advertising positions in these big events, it found some clients got treated significantly better. In fact, during ABC's recent telecast of the Academy Awards, General Motors walked away with 50 percent of its Oscar schedule in "A" spots, or the first position in a commercial pod. The finding is interesting, because while GM was one of the event's top advertisers, it bought the same number of ad units as Pepsi and J.C. Penney, which only got a third of their ads in "A" positions. To learn if this was an automotive category phenomenon, Media IQ analyzed the entire commercial load for the program, and found that in five of the 11 commercial breaks, local stations were "piling on with messages" stacked with local car advertising. "It's a tougher category than Best Picture," quipped Cauley. While Pepsi only got an average shake in ABC's Oscar telecast, it did better as one of the top advertisers in Fox's coverage of the Super Bowl, achieving at least 40 percent "A" positioning in that event. "If it weren't for Cadbury Schweppes' incumbency in the Grammys, Pepsi would have a clean category sweep of these top three TV events," noted Cauley. Meanwhile, the other big Super Bowl advertiser, Anheuser Busch, got decidedly less kind treatment in the Oscar telecast, which yielded only one "A" position in the six spots it purchased over the last two Oscars.

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Oscar Advertisers Ranked By % Of 'A' Ad Positions

	Total spots	# A's	% A's
General Motors	6	3	50%
Pepsi	6	2	33%
JC Penney	6	2	33%
L'Oreal	4	1	25%
Anheuser-Busch	3	1	33%
Mastercard	3	1	33%
American Express	3	1	33%
P&G	2	0	0%
Home Depot	2	0	0%
Nabisco	2	0	0%
McDonalds	2	0	0%
Kodak	1	0	0%
Career Builder	1	0	0%
Hewlett Packard	1	0	0%
Dyson	1	0	0%
Microsoft	1	0	0%
Mars	1	0	0%
State Farm	1	0	0%
McNeil	1	0	0%

Source: Media IQ analysis of commerical pods in ABC's telecast of the 2005 Academy Awards.