An analysis of actual ad spending trends during the second and third quarters indicates most marketers are firmly in rebound, but the biggest gains are occurring among the biggest companies. The analysis, published by Allocadia, is based on spending data from 50 of its customers, and shows that the very biggest -- companies $5 billion on greater -- saw the steepest sequential declines in the second quarter, when the pandemic hit, but also the biggest gains in the third quarter, when the ad economy began to rebound.

I've been analyzing television programming for more than 30 years. There was a time, not too long ago, when I could list every show on TV on any given night off the top of my head. Not today. This is the era of Peak TV+. In addition to broadcast television and ad-supported and premium cable, we now have several major streaming services - the first three, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video (which have only been producing original content for about seven years), were joined three years ago by CBS All Access (soon to be rebranded Paramount+), and over the …

The rise in disinformation isn't just impacting politics and social discourse, it's having an impact on giving -- making it more important than ever for nonprofit charities to be transparent. That's a key conclusion of the just-published "Future of Giving 2020" report from Omnicom's Sparks & Honey. The report illustrate how even once bedrock recipients of giving, such as churches and religious institutions, are seeing their charitable base erode.

The first week of the NFL season, which also is the first to have Nielsen's out-of-home viewing estimates embedded in the ratings, has proven to have a significant impact, despite the pandemic. The out-of-home viewing, which mainly comes from bars, restaurants, health clubs, and offices that presumably have been impacted by reduced capacity due to COVID-19, boosted Week 1 of the 2020 NFL season's ratings by 7%.

The U.S. advertising economy fell 7.2% during the first six months of 2020, though the rate of erosion is expected to moderate to -2.0% during the second half, according to new estimates released today by IPG Mediabrands' Magna unit. Based on the new data, Magna shaved three-tenths of a percentage point off its projection for the full year, cutting it to -4.6% from the -4.3% it was projecting in its last update in June.

While economic disruption moderated the rate of media cost inflation for advertisers this year, it won't actually go negative for any quarter -- including the height of the ad recession in Q2 -- according to an analysis released this week by R3 Worldwide.

While overall ad spending has declined, a new study of TV and radio ad campaigns indicates they are actually performing better during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis released this morning by performance analytics firm Veritone shows that on average, TV and radio ad campaigns are generating nearly 7% greater "lift" -- defined as increased traffic to the advertiser's website -- over the course of the 15-months analyzed.

Less than a year after its November 2019 launch, Disney+ is on track to overtake Hulu as the third-largest subscription video-on-demand service in the U.S. by 2024, according to new estimates released today by eMarketer. With an estimated 72.4 million viewers, Disney+ has already penetrated nearly a third (32.1%) of the U.S. OTT marketplace, according to eMarketer.

Prime-time network TV scatter ad prices have remained relatively stable for the Big 3 networks during the first five months of the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks mainly to gains by NBC. But the loss of major live sporting event have dragged average scatter ad prices down for ABC and CBS, according to a Research Intelligencer analysis of data released by television ad price intelligence firm SQAD.

Consumer economic confidence has hit a COVID-19 pandemic low, according to the eighth and final wave of pandemic-related tracking conducted by Kantar. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents say they have either felt the impact or expect to be impacted soon by the economic effects of the pandemic, according to Kantar's COVID-19 Barometer.