• by Wayne Friedman , December 19, 2019

With just one week left of the NFL regular season, season-to-date TV ratings of games have inched up 6% (from 5% the week before) when looking at all five TV networks.

NFL’s regular-season games are averaging a Nielsen-measured 16.5 million viewers --  maintaining its top dominant position in looking at all linear, live TV programming.

NFL’s national TV advertising revenue take is also higher -- up 13% to $4.04 billion from $3.57 billion a year ago through 15 weeks of the season, according to iSpot.tv, which adds that all regular-season games have amassed 149.9 billion impressions versus 132.3 billion a year ago.

The biggest advertisers this year on the NFL were Verizon, with 1,062 national/regional airings of its commercials ($130.1 million in spending); Geico with 771 airings ($129 million); Progressive Insurance with 526 airings ($110.5 million); State Farm with 731 airings ($89.4 million) and Toyota with 319 airings ($84.2 million).

Fox has pulled in $1.4 billion in national TV advertising revenue from its airing on Sunday afternoon NFL and “Thursday Night Football” games, while NBC is at $1.1 billion CBS is at $1.0 billion; ESPN, $466.5 million; and the NFL Network is at $46.2 million, according to iSpot.tv.