Entertainment Marketing Recovers On TV, 'Light' Viewers A Concern

Now, almost two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Samba TV says all entertainment TV marketing -- including for TV shows and theatrical movies -- has risen to near pre-COVID levels for national TV -- around 125 billion impressions in the third quarter of 2021.

This is up substantially from 80 billion in the second quarter of 2021, according to the TV measurement company, when stay-at-home orders were still in place for much of the country. Overall reach for linear TV has remained consistent — at around the 90% level.

Still, most networks witnessed a decline in linear TV impressions across top entertainment marketers.

In the third quarter of 2021, NBC amassed 6.7 billion impressions for the top 10 entertainment marketers in paid advertising, while CBS came in at 6.4 billion, followed by ABC, 5.8 billion; Fox, 3.4 billion; HGTV, 2.9 billion; TLC, 2.6 billion; and Discovery Channel, 2.4 billion.

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“The decrease in linear impressions across top advertisers corresponds with many placing increased weight in CTV and digital. Data shows this can be an imperative strategy,” says a Samba TV report.

So-called “light” TV viewers may continue to be a problem for entertainment marketers -- especially those only using linear TV advertising exposure.

These viewers -- traditionally, those who watch less than two hours of linear TV a day -- are more likely to watch streaming platforms than any linear network, according to Samba TV. It says nearly 70% of these households tune in to OTT content.

At the same time, linear TV networks all reached less than 40% of these light viewers -- 39% for NBC, 38% for Fox, 37% for ABC, and 33% for CBS.

While entertainment marketers typically under-index light TV viewers -- younger audiences and Black, Hispanic and Asian households -- they typically over-index among older white, viewers 55+.

1 comment about "Entertainment Marketing Recovers On TV, 'Light' Viewers A Concern".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, January 11, 2022 at 8:14 a.m.

    Wayne, reading this I assume that they are referring to smartsets not individual viewers so when they talk about "light viewers" who "watch" less than two hours per day this means TV sets that are on less than two hours per day. Which raises a quesstion. In order to determine whether a household is a "light TV set user", don't they have to measure activity on all of its sets---the dumb ones as well as the smart ones? Also, I assume that the "reach" figures cited are for weekly reach, not monthly---or are they for an entire quarter? It makes a difference.

    I think that in cases like this, it would be helpful to begin with a short description of what Samba TV measures---set ctivity for 3 million smartsets, for example. If that is the case,  we could avoid confusion when the words "viewers" or "viewing" are used in conjunction with "households".

    One final question. In your last sentence   you say that Samba  TV is telling us   that "entertainment marketers" typically under-index light TV viewers---younger audiences and Black, Hispanic and Asian households. I guess that this refers to their "linear TV" time buys. But every  other survey I have seen shows that Black viewers as a group, are heavy, not light TV viewers while Hispanics tend to be more evenly distributed among heavy, moderate and light viewing segments. Are Samba's Black -owned smartsets really that different from the norm in TV usage?

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