• by Wayne Friedman , 9 hours ago

The first weekend of the NCAA “March Madness” college basketball tournament for all programming and games witnessed a 5% increase in national TV advertising on all networks to a collective $499.0 million, according to estimates from iSpot.

From March 18 through March 23, there were a total 14.5 billion impressions from 7,326 airings on the four networks airing the event -- CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV.

The average "attention" index, according to iSpot, was 119. This means the average TV ad messaging in the event performed 19% better than the TV industry average.

The attention calculation is based on interruptions — actions where the viewer stopped watching the ad, which include changing the channel, fast-forwarding, accessing a programming guide, and turning off the TV.

Major advertisers this year include AT&T Wireless, Home Depot and Geico.

National TV spend was $473.1 million a year ago -- with 15.2 billion impressions and 6,990 airings. As with last year, major brands for this year’s event included Home Depot, AT&T and GEICO.

Viewership for the first weekend was up 7% to 10.1 million Nielsen-measured average viewers per game. The opening games -- the Round of 64 -- averaged 9.5 million viewers, while the second round of 32 games earned 11 million viewers.

The highest-viewed games featured major college basketball brands.

CBS’ airing of the St. John’s 67-65 upset victory over Kansas was the top game in ratings, with 10.6 million viewers.

In second place was another upset -- Iowa State’s 82-63 win over Kentucky, with 9.8 million viewers -- followed by top-seeded Duke's win over TCU 81-58, which registered 9.6 million viewers.