COVID-19 Ads Peaked At Nearly A Fifth Of All TV Commercials In Q2 2020

If TV advertising messages are a barometer of how Madison Avenue thinks, the COVID-19 pandemic peaked in the minds of the ad industry's creative departments during the second quarter of 2020 with nearly a fifth of all U.S. national TV advertising related in some way to the crisis.

That's the finding of an analysis of TV creative executions during 2020, which reveals the share of COVID-19 messages.

The analysis, which was provided to MediaPost as part of an op-ed published today by Nielsen Senior Vice President-Product Management Ad Intel Heather Jordan, shows that the COVID-19 campaigns climbed from less than 1% during the first quarter, peaked at 17.9% in the second quarter and began ebbing to 11.4% by the fourth quarter.

The data also reveals how quickly major U.S. TV advertisers and their agencies were able to respond to the crisis, despite challenges to normal TV ad production processes.

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