• by Wayne Friedman , September 15, 2022

NFL in-game advertising for the first week of the new 2022 season grew 8%, totaling $250.4 million across all national TV networks from Thursday through Monday, according to EDO Ad EnGage.

EDO says there was an increase to 637 total airings -- up 67 airings over 2021 (575) and 152 more than in 2020 (485).

Automotive was the biggest ad category -- at $30.3 million, followed by insurance ($28 million) and consumer packaged goods ($25.5 million).

Total online search engagements for those brands’ NFL media schedules amounted to 12.3 million -- lower than the previous year, when they totaled 15.4 million -- but higher than in 2020, when the total was 11.4 million.

EDO measures TV ads via search-engine volume, which quantifies ad engagement five to ten minutes after an ad airs.

The best-performing individual brands for the week were entertainment TV and movie brands.

20th Century Studios had 1.05 million searches, with $2.45 million in total ad spending, followed by Apple iPhone with 900,00 searches at $6.91 million; Disney+ with 740,000 searches at $5.4 million and Netflix with 675,000 searches on $1.34 million.

Among individual entertainment brands, the highest total searches were for Warner Bros. “The Matrix Resurrections” (799,631); Paramount+, “Mayor of Kingstown” (620,438); and 20th Century Studios’, “The Last Duel” (594,463).

Looking at all NFL-related linear TV programming over that period, the first week posted $413.0 million in advertising revenue -- 3% higher than the total of $401.3 million in 2021, according to iSpot.tv estimates.

NBC came in at $125.6 million, followed by CBS at $83.2 million; Fox at $77.4 million; ABC at $53.9 million; ESPN at $36.9 million; ESPN2 at $9.2 million; NFL Network at $1.2 million; NBCUniversal’s Universo at $18.1 million; and ESPN Deportes at $7.5 million.

This story has been updated.