Ok, ok… what do you expect! Those of you who know me, you understand that I have bragging rights, afterall USC is my alma mater plus this post is very relevant to my Blog topics!It appears ABC is coming up Roses this year! According to John Consoli’s December 12th article in Mediaweek, ABC has about 10 percent of its ad inventory left to sell for their Jan. 4 prime-time Rose Bowl telecast and the Network is aiming to maximize sales of the remaining units by packaging in-game spots with advertising across ESPN properties.Ed Erhardt, president of ESPN/ABC Sports Customer Marketing and Sales stated that:
"We're not looking to just sell in-game spots, the USC-Texas match-up [both teams are undefeated] could be one of the highest-rated college football games ever, so we plan to use it to help drive advertising to our other media platforms".
He added that many of the other platforms in the packages would have synergy with the Rose Bowl. For example, ESPN The Magazine, in its Jan. 2 issue, will offer a BCS preview. Obviously Erhardt sales philosophy is similar to what many of us work towards in the media business, leverage your high valued inventory.According to Nielsen, the 2004 Orange Bowl was the Bowl Championship Series (USC 55 vs. OU 19) game generated a household rating of 13.7 nationally. The four BCS games totaled a 43.0 household rating. In the year prior, the Sugar Bowl was the BCS championship game and produced a 14.5 household rating, and the 2003 Fiesta Bowl BCS championship produced a 17.2 rating. The BCS bowl games, while having declined in ratings, are still among the highest-rated prime-time programs during the first week in January. John Concoli (Mediaweek reporter) went on to point out that; “Thirty-second spots in the Rose Bowl were selling for between $1.5 million and $1.8 million per unit prior to the USC-Texas match-up being determined”. Erhardt said “about 70 percent of the units were sold as part of multiyear, multigame packages while another 20 percent of the units were sold during the upfront as strips with ads in all four BCS games”. Citi will present the game; other sponsors will include Cingular, Home Depot and Texas Instruments. Read the full article in 12/12/05 Mediaweek: Bloom On The Rose Bowl GO TROJANS!
Case Makes case!
I was working with Time Warner during the merger with AOL and although I was shocked by the initial news, I did believe that the combination of the two company’s made great sense. This of course was years ago, when my 401K was worth something and I could have considered retirement at a reasonable age! Yesterday in an essay published in The Washington Post, my illustrious ex-leader Steve Case argues for the breakup of Time Warner, suggesting that its cable; print, film production and AOL units would perform better as stand-alone companies. Case believes the AOL-Time Warner merger failed in large part due to concessions made to the sprawling corporate divisions, which prevented company leaders from exploiting synergies in the combined company.Maybe he has a point! Read – “It’s time to Take it Apart.” From The Washington Post Dec 11, 2005.
Outdoor Advertising upsurge
I do my best to say abreast to all sectors of the Advertising industry because I enjoy spotting tends and studying how they effect each other. In the resent past the Outdoor Advertising business has been witnessing a lot of sizable growth. The leading companies in this group are Viacom, Clear Channel and Lamar. On Tuesday evening I caught a quick segment as Jim Cramer was commenting on the business, “Billboards are making a comeback” he said on his "Mad Money" CNBC show, and he is Bullish on Lamar Advertising.“Lamar has ad space on billboards, buses, bus shelters and benches all places you can't miss, Cramer noted. Because of the increase in the use of digital video recorders such as TiVo, advertisers are moving away from TV advertising. Other forms of advertising, such as the Internet and billboards, are gaining share. You can't TiVo a billboard," he said. Lamar is adding digital billboards, which allow it to show multiple ads on one space and should increase sales. And Nielson is coming out with a rating system (more on this soon) for billboard advertising, Cramer said, which should make advertisers more comfortable as the can quantify the effectiveness of their ads. Enhancements and dropping cost on digital printing, flat panel displays and emerging technologies like electronic paper displays (see E Ink) will also revolutionize this industry in the not to distant future. Links: Lamar Advertising Company, OAAA’s – History of Outdoor Advertising
Usage Up & Portals: hot commodity
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Search engines have become an increasingly important part of the online experience of American internet users." On average, nearly 60 million people use search engines daily. This represents a sharp just over this past year where the total number of people using search engines on an average day has jumped from roughly 38 million - an increase of roughly 55%, according to an Emarketer report. The company also recently released results of a study on Internet Portal usage and thanks to robust demand for online advertising, a broadband audience hungry for multimedia applications and an increasingly confident population of online shoppers, portals are hot properties again. Measured by sheer size of audience, Yahoo continues to be the number one site on the Web, according to data from Nielsen NetRatings. MSN, Google and AOL trail Yahoo in terms of unique audience. During the week ended September 4, 2005, nearly half of all Internet users logged on to Yahoo and all of the Big Four portals had an active reach of more than 30% of all Internet users. This audience build up is having impact on many other industries. For example, AOL and Yahoo are the leading online music destinations - and AOL has partnered with iTunes and MusicNet to create a free and paid music service. News is one of the core content areas of the Internet, and as with music (and video), portals have captured the largest audience for news among the online audience. Yahoo! and MSNBC top the list.
Ok, ok… what do you expect! Those of you who know me, you understand that I have bragging rights, afterall USC is my alma mater plus this post is very relevant to my Blog topics!
