Category: Contributors

The word fan comes from the word fanatic, meaning an enthusiastic devotee, usually as a spectator. And on Sunday, February 13, there will be inspiring moments both on the field and on screen—for fans around the globe to experience. 

Not surprisingly, the NFL is the most popular sports league among Americans; 92 of the top 100 most watched telecasts in 2021 were either live NFL games or NFL studio programming. What is surprising, however, is that the two teams headed to Super Bowl LVI rank 27 and 29 (in terms of the number of fans) among the 32 teams in the NFL. But we know it takes a lot more than a fanbase to get to the big game. That said, these two teams have the opportunity to gain some new fans amid the season-ending hype. While this is a tale of two teams, it’s also an epic matchup of two dynamic quarterbacks and their conference-winning teams.

First, we have the Cincinnati Bengals: an “against all odds” team with an offensive Rookie of the Year wideout, an All-Pro running back and a defensive line–with two of the NFL’s sack leaders–all guided by a Joe Cool quarterback versus the Los Angeles Rams: a team formed through a compilation of coincidences; garnering an outstanding quarterback, supported by a defensive lineup of superstars and a wide receiver—coincidentally from the other Ohio NFL team, the Cleveland Browns. Add another coincidence to the list for this Rams team: they will play with a home-field advantage, as the league determined the game would be played at SoFi Stadium well before the 2021-22 season began. 

Fandom growing outside the U.S.

And this Super Bowl experience for fans is going to be exciting everywhere—with NFL.com touting the 2022 ways to watch the Super Bowl across countries and languages. While the NFL is historically an “American” sport, it does have a very large global fanbase, with fandom growing globally through its international games in Mexico and the U.K.

National fans

In the U.S. alone, sports programming accounted for 98% of the most-viewed programs across broadcast and 72% of the most-viewed programs on cable television between January and September 2021, with last year’s Super Bowl LV accounting for 20.3 billion minutes viewed. Despite both teams’ rank in fanbases, the NFL is still the most popular sport in both Cincinnati and Los Angeles, with interest levels the highest for the NFL in both markets, trailed only by Major League Baseball. 

Is it really about the game–or the ads?

With the NFL enjoying a big increase in regular season TV viewership, the Super Bowl LVI ad game got off to an early start this year, and the final handful of ad units available were sold just last week, securing as much as $7 million for 30-second spots.

As brands seek ways to establish deeper, more personalized connections with consumers, awareness and engagement remain paramount. Now, given the wealth of information known about consumers, marketers can do more. In a recent interview with Forbes, Nielsen CMCO Jamie Moldafsky highlighted how consumers increasingly expect brands to understand them better, including their shopping behaviors, attitudes, needs and interests. With that data in hand, brands can put consumers at the center of their strategies and campaigns to create experiences that matter. Importantly, marketers must be more focused than ever on their target market, desired behaviors and a real-time insight. And while many people focus on the on-field action of the Super Bowl, many think of the ads.

Let’s take a look at some of the highest spending brand categories during the 2021 NFL regular season and see how they compare to purchase habits of Super Bowl watchers. 

Automobiles 

The automotive category spent nearly $1 billion on ad spots during NFL games and pre/post game shows across factories, dealerships, dealership associations, and automotive accessories–putting autos as the top brand category in terms of ad spend in the 2021 regular season. That spend will play well among the 19.5 million Super Bowl watchers who plan to get a vehicle in the next 12 months, per Nielsen Scarborough: 18.8% plan on getting a new/used/leased vehicle, 5% above the general population, and 43% of those plan on getting a new/used/leased vehicle.

Of those planning to buy a new vehicle, SUVs, pickup trucks, and midsize cars are the most popular among Super Bowl watchers: 

• SUV: 40.1%
• Pickup truck: 26.5%
• Midsize car: 12.6%

While 7.5% of Bengals fans in Cincinnati plan to buy a new vehicle in the next 12 months, 46% of them plan to buy an SUV, followed by pickup trucks (21.2%) and midsize cars (15.8%). Of the 10% of Rams fans in Los Angeles who plan to buy a new vehicle in the next 12 months, 29% plan to buy an SUV, followed by hybrids/EVs (27%) and pickup trucks (25%).  

Quick Service Restaurants 

The restaurant category is one of the largest TV ad spenders across football programming—and is largely dominated by quick-service restaurants (QSRs). Super Bowl watchers and fans of both teams have a strong category fit with both QSRs and sit-down restaurants, as 89% of national Super Bowl watchers have used a QSR in the past 30 days. Bengals and Rams are bigger QSR fans than the general public: 

• 94% of Rams fans have visited a QSR in the past 30 days
• 95% of Bengals fans have visited a QSR in the past 30 days

Beer

Despite the wide array of advertisements we see during the football season, alcohol spending is always high, with beer brands leading the charge.

Across cable TV, network TV, and spot TV during NFL pre-game, post-game, and in-game broadcasts in the 2021 regular season, there was an estimated ad spend of $201 million by the beer, wine and liquor category, per Nielsen Ad Intel. The alcohol category’s ad spend is dominated by beer brands; however, seltzer has cut into the market share. Approximately 73% of the spend ($148 million) beer brands account for, while 26% of the spend ($53 million) in the category is for hard seltzer brands.

• The Bengals fans in Cincinnati are drinking light beer, with approximately 36% having consumed a domestic light beer in the past 30 days. 
• Alternatively, imported beer is the most popular beer category of Rams fans, with 41% of Rams having consumed an imported beer in the past 30 days. 
• Super Bowl watchers are 22% more likely than gen pop to have consumed beer in the last 30 days. 

As the two teams take the field on Sunday, fans around the world will be watching arguably one of the biggest sporting and cultural events of the year. For the unprepared, this means you still have time to buy your snacks and beer. And for those not interested in whether the Bengals or the Rams win the game, put on your “I’m only here for halftime show sweatshirt,” fire up social media and enjoy the power of creative storytelling through the ads. 

Methodology

The insights in this article were derived from:

• Nielsen Fan Insights
• Nielsen Scarborough January – July 2021 USA
• Nielsen Ad Intel 
• Nielsen TV Ratings

Every once in a while, a word becomes so common in our media vocabulary that we lose sight of its actual meaning. Impression is a good example. We know what it means. We’ve been using it for decades. Yet as the term is used more broadly for holistic media measurement, it’s easy to wonder if its meaning has changed along the way.

 

It hasn’t.

To level set, let’s agree that the word impression simply refers to the act of seeing content and advertising. Back in the early 1990s, online publishers began using the word to tell advertisers how many people saw their banner ads. Today, the media industry uses the word much more widely, and that usage is backed by comprehensive—and independent—measurement and validation standards. That evolution notwithstanding, the word still refers to people seeing content and ads.

The universal applicability of the term is precisely why impressions are the great equalizer, particularly as consumers broaden their content consumption across devices and platforms—and on their own schedules. That behavior has also advanced the industry’s move to impression-based buying and selling, which has been accelerating for some time. This year, with the incorporation of broadband-only homes into local TV measurement, that acceleration culminates as the industry adopts impressions-based buying and selling in local markets across the U.S. 

Through the transition toward Nielsen ONE, the media industry gains full comparability across linear and digital, and measurement will be complete and representative. Additionally, the industry gets comparable measurement at the subminute level. 

While the premise of an impression is simple, there is a layer of complexity that factors into what constitutes an impression. For comparable cross-media measurement, the move to impressions relies on existing standards that determine whether content can actually be seen by someone (i.e., viewability). 

Historically, viewability has been more of a consideration across digital platforms (due to ads below the fold, ads that don’t render, skippable ads, and more), but digital and linear are quickly converging as consumer behavior continues to transcend platform categorization. Amid the convergence, access to scheduled programming no longer requires a cable subscription. Consumers can skip ads in certain CTV applications and advertisers continue to increase their use of programmatic technology as smart TV adoption continues to proliferate. 

Viewability standards have evolved over the years, but until recently, that progression had pertained to individual platforms. Several cross-media audience measurement standards have emerged to bridge linear and digital. According to some standards, cross-platform viewability happens when 100% of the pixels from content is viewed on screen for two consecutive seconds. The standards also assume that television programming is distributed at 100% pixels.

While the media industry has been using impressions for years—even in national TV— the transition to impressions for complete and comparable cross-media measurement is a significant step. And while it’s predicated on a foundational metric that’s road tested and abundantly understood, applying it universally will be an adjustment.

Applying it across both studio- and creator-produced content will also be an adjustment, particularly with respect to the differing opinions about varied levels of content production and “quality.”  The audience and advertiser will decide on quality, and brands will likely use filters for determining where they place their advertisements, just as they do with tools like DV and IAS for determining “safe content.” Filters may vary by advertiser, but there is a need for the industry to set some basic standards, and we are keen to work with the buy-side to incorporate them into measurement. 

Any sweeping change, no matter how foreseen, will be met with at least some resistance—not to mention questions. In this instance, the questions should be easy to navigate, largely because the foundation for the road ahead already exists and the industry has standards to address questions about viewability. It will, however, take some time for the industry to fully adapt.

To help with adaptation, average commercial minute ratings will remain available for linear measurement as the industry acclimates. For true comparability across platforms, however, brands and agencies will be able to leverage Individual Commercial Metrics to activate and optimize their omni channel campaigns. 

As brands and agencies make the transition, however, it’s important for each to understand that impressions from different measurement sources will vary in quality. As with any form of measurement, impression quality will depend on comprehensive, person-level representation. And from that perspective, impressions provide a more accurate form of measurement than ratings. 

Unlike ratings-based measurement, which yields a percentage of a given universe of users, impressions reflect the actual number of times ads appear in front of viewers. That means:

• Advertisers are better equipped to engage with the consumers they’re most interested in
• Program performance is more accurate (i.e., audiences aren’t gained or lost to rounding)

There has never been a more critical time for all parties in the media industry to understand how consumers are engaging with media. Connectivity, device and platform proliferation, and individual choice create seemingly infinite choice for consumers—and that choice amplifies the need for measurement that’s agnostic of said choice. With the convergence of linear and digital worlds, impressions provide measurement. To make the most of impressions, it will be critical that impressions are of a quality that provide representative measurement. While there is only one definition for the word “impression,” an impression is only as good as its supporting data.

This article originally appeared on Broadcasting+Cable.

In the 1985 film Back to the Future, there’s a line in one of the scenes that takes place in 1955 where Marty McFly tells his grandmother that his family has two TVs. As he’s referring to his life in 1985, his grandmother quickly dismisses him, saying that “nobody has two television sets.”

Fast forward to 2022 and multiple-set households are the norm. In fact, only 19% of U.S. homes have just one TV. Regardless of prevalence within the household, the TV remains a media mainstay, complementing the growing array of other devices that consumers use to access whatever content they choose—and on their schedules. Freed from a physical dial’s worth of content (another 1955 reference), today’s TVs have all the flexibility in the world when it comes to content, and American households are consistently evolving how they use their TV sets, and that usage varies from room to room.

Today, the average number of TVs in a U.S. home today is 2.3. And much like back in 1955, almost half of the TVs in U.S. homes today (44%) don’t rely on cable or satellite boxes for content (i.e., cord cutters). And given the depth of choice that consumers have access to, many households mix and match the content options rather than selecting one over another. In that way, it’s not unusual for a TV set in one room to access content via broadband connection while a TV in a different room accesses programming through a cable or satellite service. In fact, 51% of the TV sets in secondary bedrooms are used for streaming only.

The proliferation of devices and platforms has implications when we look at media consumption from room to room—and from household member to household member. Understanding personalized TV usage and consumption as choice increases provides advertisers and agencies with the insight they need to ensure meaningful engagement with end consumers at the point of consumption.

SVOD programming draws a crowd

As it has been for many years, the living room remains the media control center of any TV household, as it accounts for notably more share of total TV usage than any room in the house (58% among persons 2 and older).

What’s interesting, however, is that the living room isn’t always the co-viewing hub you’d expect, as 55% of content being viewed involves just a single viewer. For cable and syndicated programming, single-person TV viewing in the living room is even higher. In fact, co-viewing is only dominant in the living room when consumers are engaged with subscription video on-demand (SVOD) content.

Connected device usage permeates throughout the home

As connectivity and access to content permeates American households, complemented by the availability of relatively inexpensive television sets, smart TV ownership and internet-connected device (i.e. streaming sticks) usage are becoming increasingly common. And as the TV hub, the living room gets first dibs on the latest technology to facilitate access to the growing depth of over-the-top (OTT) content: nearly half of all smart TVs, 44% of game consoles and 40% of internet-connected devices are in the living room. When you aggregate internet-connected devices in primary and secondary bedrooms, however, the distribution (44%) is higher than it is in living rooms, highlighting the significance of TV connected usage throughout the household.

That connectivity throughout the house is directly linked to the way younger consumers use the TVs that aren’t in the living room. In secondary bedrooms, for example, 51% of consumers use internet-connected devices to engage with content. In basements, that percentage is 47%. In primary bedrooms, traditional TV programming accounts for 68% of use; among consumers 65 and older, that percentage rises to 88%.

Back in 1955, TV usage was very straightforward. It was scheduled, limited to a handful of channels and attracted audiences to a single set. Now “in the future,” usage couldn’t be more varied; specifically how audiences are using their TVs, and where within the house.