• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, August 19, 2020

D2C brands’ TV ad impressions rose 13.7% in this year’s first half, despite the pandemic’s squelching of tent-pole events on TV and a 2.6% decrease in these brands’ ad spending during the period, reports iSpot.tv.

The 146 D2C brands tracked by the real-time TV ad measurement and attribution company spent more than $1.2 billion on nearly 163 billion impressions during the six months.

While relatively new to TV, D2C brands represent a growing category for the medium. “Even with spending cutbacks, the fact that D2C brands had more TV ad impressions year-over-year shows that TV advertisers of any experience level can find audiences even without tentpoles,” says the iSpot report. 

Nearly 25% of all first-half D2C ad impressions on TV came from five brands: Carvana, Wayfair, Grubhub, Peloton and Noom. 

Carvana led all brands in the category in both TV ad impressions (9.42 billion) and estimated spend ($76.6 million). 

Health and beauty brands, including wellness apps like Headspace and Noom, generated more than 21% of all D2C TV brand impressions, leading all industries.

With consumers not eating out at restaurants, delivery services increased impressions by 34.3% year-over-year. 

Cable news networks (MSNBC, CNN, Fox News) were three of the top four networks for D2C brand impressions.