• by Wayne Friedman , January 11, 2018

NBC says it will hit a sports-advertising record for February with its two big TV events -- the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics -- pulling in $1.4 billion in TV/digital ad revenue.

Dan Lovinger, executive vice president of advertising sales for NBC Sports Group, in a press call said $900 million in national advertising will come from the Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea -- a record for a Winter Olympics games.

Four days after the Super Bowl, NBC will begin to air the games, which will last 18 days overall. “It’s the first time in history a company has had both sports close together.”

Lovinger says there are only a handful of units that remain in the Super Bowl -- which he says go for more than $5 million for a 30-second in-game commercial, on average. He says automotive, movie studios and telecommunications categories are strong.

Big emerging categories for the Olympics include consumer products -- complementing mainstay consumer electronics, beverage, financial services, telecommunications and automotive marketers.

Lovinger says 33% of all advertisers are buying both events -- up from a 25% early pacing some months ago.

While he did not disclose sellout levels for the Olympics, he did say that over the 18-day period for the event, some prime-time nights are sold out. He added: “The Olympics are one of the less commercialized programs in television.”

As Lovinger has previously said, marketers will be guaranteed on total average viewers, versus the TV household metric of past games. NBC’s Total Audience Delivery will include viewing on all devices -- TV sets, connected TVs, tablets, and smartphones.

Although Nielsen will be the dominant media researcher providing the data, Lovinger added that a few marketers have other third-party measurement involved with their Olympic buys.

For this Winter Olympics, NBC will, for the first time, be selling a handful of digital-only packages. In the past, all digital media buys were combined with traditional TV media schedules.

Concerning possible makegoods in either event, Lovinger said: “It remains to be seen. I imagine to some degree, as always in these events, [it could occur]. But only if it makes financial sense for the advertiser and us.”