• by Wayne Friedman , January 21, 2019

Three weeks of NFL playoff games and programming this year have amounted to 5% less national and regional advertising revenue, according to iSpot.tv.

Across all networks, this amounted to $928.6 million with the most recent week -- the big NFC and AFC Championship games -- pulling in $349.5 million.

The year before, over the same period -- all networks totaled $974.3 million, with championship game programming content totaling $359.4 million.

For the NFL regular season, early results showed advertising revenue down 10% to 15%, with viewership up around 5%. Media-buying executives point to lower pricing for advertising deals this season, based on lower projected viewership.

NFL 2018 season viewing was down around 10% from the 2017 season.

This year, looking at the first two weeks of playoff games (eight contests), NFL viewing is up 9% -- averaging 30.4 million Nielsen viewers in 2019 versus 27.8 million total viewers a year ago.

One divisional playoff game -- the Los Angeles Chargers vs. the New England Patriots -- was down 7% from the same game a year ago.

Preliminary results for the AFC Championship game on CBS -- the New England Patriots vs. Kansas City Chiefs -- showed Nielsen household ratings up 26% from last year’s similar late afternoon game.

To date, top advertisers for all pre-Super Bowl playoff game programming,according to iSpot.tv, were:

Verizon, 62 airings of commercials ($47.6 million); Progressive Insurance, 120 airings, ($39.3 million); Ford Motor, 35, ($38.1 million); AT&T Wireless, 33 ($31.1 million); and Chevrolet 17, (30.5 million); GEICO, 50 ($29.0 million); and Apple iPhone, 20, ($28.5 million).

TurboTax, 79 airings ($27.6 million);  State Farm, 39 units ($26.0 million); Bud Light, 111 airings ($25.4 million); GMC, 17 ($23.1 million); and Pepsi 21 ($20.7 million).

The Super Bowl will air February 3 on CBS.