Spend on new national TV ads increased 13% during the week of April 16th compared to the previous week, reaching a total of $132m. Overall national TV expenditures also got a boost, increasing 9% to $928m. As the first full week of the NBA playoffs, advertisers invested the most heavily professional basketball games. NBA games brought in $16m on new ad expenditures, 12% of all new spending.
It was a fairly tame week overall for TV spending—the NBA postseason is hitting its groove along with reality competitions, so there hasn’t been programming (aside from the Scandal finale) to invest massive amounts of dollars for. Still, most of the top five TV buys of the week hovered around the $5m mark, either through promotions, new features or ExxonMobil’s #UnexpectedEnergy.
This week, as we look to blockbuster season starting a week early with Avengers: Infinity War, 20th Century Fox and Walt Disney Pictures went head-to-head to get fanatics and casual moviegoers alike to catch a film over the next few weeks—preferably theirs. This week it was all about superheroes for the two film studios.
20th Century Fox spent 95% of its new ad dollars ($4.2m to promote Deadpool 2, the eleventh installment in the X-Men film series and sequel to the 2016 film Deadpool). The movie is set to release on May 18 and this is the first big surge of TV advertising from the studio to support the film. With the release date just weeks away, more advertising and higher spend are likely on the horizon.
Walt Disney Pictures also used a large chunk of its budget this week to promote a superhero sequel – Avengers: Infinity War, the 19th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The studio spent $3.3m on new commercials to promote the film, 75% of its new spend for the week. The release of the latest Avengers flick is fast approaching on April 27 and the studio has been promoting the movie on TV since the beginning of February. So far, overall TV ad expenditures for the movie have totaled $19m.
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This data is part of ongoing reporting released on a weekly basis with Kantar Media using its AdScope tool.