• by Wayne Friedman , July 18, 2024

Due to more prime-time emphasis on sports programming, national TV ad impressions on linear TV networks climbed 14% to 261.9 billion for the first half of 2024, according to estimates from iSpot.tv.

But this wasn’t enough to give linear TV networks a gain in overall national TV linear ad spending, which slipped 2.8% to $22.2 billion for the first six months of this year. 

In addition, there was an overall drop of 3.7% to 4.23 trillion in households for TV ad impressions for all dayparts. 

Prime time now has a 26.1% share of all impressions (up 2.6%), while daytime comes in at a 17.7% share (down 3.8%); early fringe, 13.9% (down 1.4%); weekend afternoon, 10.9% (up 0.5%); and early morning, 7.7% (down 6.5%).

Looking at the top five TV networks specifically, CBS has a leading 8.0% of TV household ad impressions in the first half of 2024, followed by ABC at 7.1%; NBC, 5.4%; Fox News Channel, 4.5%; and ESPN, 3.0%.

The next five TV networks are ION at 2.6%; HGTV with 2.3%; Univision at 2.1%; MSNBC with 2.03% and Hallmark Channel at 2.02%.

The top advertisers were Progressive Insurance for CBS and NBC, according to iSpot; Verizon for ABC; Balance of Nature for Fox News Channel and Lexus for ESPN.

The top programs for TV ad impressions were the NBA (2.1%), Men’s College Basketball (1.5%), the NFL (1.52%), “Law & Order: SVU” (1.23%) and “NCIS” (0.93%).

Household TV ad impressions were extrapolated and balanced with census data among 52 million smart TV and set-top boxes.

Other data in the report comes from 82.7 million smart TV and set-top boxes, 45,000 brands, 2.2 million pieces of creative, 177 TV networks and 210 media markets.