Going For Gold: NBC Sells $10 Mil More In Olympic Ads

Beijing 2008 Olympic rings logoWith NBC's Beijing Olympics on pace to exceed advertisers' ratings guarantees, the network has reached out with extra inventory and has sold $10 million worth of new advertising in the two-week sporting event.

Seth Winter, senior vice president of sales and marketing for NBC Sports & Olympics, said in a statement that there was a surge in interest in the movie, packaged-goods and retail categories. More than 100 companies have advertised during NBC's Olympic coverage.

NBC has said it has already sold $1 billion in advertising for this Olympics, which cost the network around $890 million in rights fees. But it didn't sell all its advertising time going into the event--holding back for possible makegood inventory in case the event under-delivered.

Through six days of the event, so far, it looks like NBC is on pace; it won't have to give back commercial time to advertisers. Right now, NBC is averaging nearly an 18 rating among households in prime time for the event. It had promised advertisers roughly a 14.5 rating.

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NBC's Winter said in a release: "Americans are consuming our Olympic coverage in record numbers and in every way--through broadcast, cable, online and mobile. What's particularly encouraging to me is the strength in the young male demo, which has shown the largest increase of any age group."

NBC notes that male 18-34 viewers are up 28% and men 18-49 are 22% higher. NBC's Beijing Olympics five-day average viewership is 31.3 million--almost 5 million more than the last Summer Olympics Games, Athens in 2004.

In looking at all its media platforms through its Total Audience Measurement Index (TAMI), NBC reports that total viewers who have watched some or all of its coverage totaled 74.6 million on Friday, 97.8 million on Saturday, 113.0 million on Sunday, and 103.0 million on Monday.

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