Q1 National TV Ad Revenue Sinks 2.6% Without Olympics, AVOD Grows 63%
- by Wayne Friedman , May 2, 2022
Total first-quarter national TV linear advertising was up 4.7% to $9.1 billion -- but taking out NBC's Winter Olympics, national TV witnessed a 2.6% drop, according to MoffettNathanson Research analysis.
Total national TV viewing continues to sink -- down 5% to 2.89 billion minutes based on total day viewing for ages two plus, per Nielsen's average commercial rating plus three days of time-shifted viewing.
In better news, advertising video-on-demand (AVOD) services were up 63% to $1.9 billion in ad revenue.
“To the extent AVOD can capture digital demand shifting for more brand-focused campaigns, then this may insulate the impact from weaker linear TV ratings as well,” write the authors of the MoffettNathanson research.
Hulu continues to be the leader among AVOD services. It grew 25% to $877 million.
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Peacock rose 420% to $378 million (benefiting from the Winter Olympics), while Pluto was 82% higher to $282 million, Roku was up 56% to $214 million; and Tubi was up 55% to $147 million. “Because of where each AVOD service is in its life cycle, we should see varying levels of growth,” says the report.
Total broadcast TV network ad revenues were up 11% to $4.3 billion, with cable TV network ad revenue slipping 0.4% to $4.8 billion.
“Despite the growing list of macro concerns, we expect national TV advertising growth to be down only modestly for first quarter on an underlying basis ex-Olympics,” MoffettNathanson Research analysts write.
For its broadcast business, NBCUniversal was up 78% to $2.1 billion, while CBS was down 31% (due to Super Bowl comparisons vs. the year before) to $1.1 billion, ABC slipped 2% to $543 million, and Fox was down 1% to $541 million.
On the cable side, Fox was up 6% to $300 million -- mostly due to results from Fox News Channel. Disney was up 4% to $739 million, while AMC Networks rose 3% to $205 million and Paramount Global was 3% higher to $764 million.
Companies that saw declines include NBCUniversal (0.7%) to $803 million; Discovery (1.3%) to $924 million; and Turner (6.5%) to $1.1 billion.
I wonder if anyone knows whether taking out NBC's Winter Olympics advertising was counter-balanced by incuding an estimate of typical NBS advertising in the same slots and for the same number of days?
Simply removing it (the equivalent of NBC going-to-black) and concluding that national advertising would have been down if it wasn't for the Winter Olympics would be very misleading.
Right. seems the author had an agenda other than objective reporting.