Hot player this
March: Digital on demand
TV advertising will likely be flat this year
By Toni Fitzgerald
Mar 16, 2010
Last year TV advertising revenue for March Madness declined year to year for the first time since 2001, while ratings for the final hit an all-time low.
But the story online was quite different. Advertising for March Madness on Demand, the CBS's free online video player, was up 30 percent over the previous year, and MMOD saw unique users surge 58 percent over the previous year.
This year TV advertising may stabilize, but digital will be the real star, seeing another year of big gains as more and more people use the technology to watch games at work and see teams that are unavailable via regionalized local coverage.
That's the suggestion of a new report from Kantar Media, formerly TNS Media Intelligence, which examines advertising trends for the upcoming men's NCAA basketball tournament, which tips off on Thursday.
The report finds that MMOD digital revenue hit an all-time high of $30 million last year, accounting for 4.8 percent of the total $619 million March Madness revenue for CBS.
MMOD helped offset a loss of $54 million in television advertising from 2008 to 2009. Though CBS charged the same price for spots both years, it sold 6 percent less ad time, according to Kantar, and had 21 fewer advertisers than the year before.
CBS took in $589 million total in TV advertising, off 8.5 percent from the previous year, with 81 advertisers buying spots, the least since 2000.
But with a much lower CPM, MMOD has seen demand rise despite the generally dire economic conditions. MMOD launched in 2006 with just $4 million in advertising, or 0.8 percent of CBS's total take.
That rose to $9 million the next year and $23 million in 2008 before hitting last year's peak of $30 million.
That will be even higher this year. CBS has forecast that ad revenue will be up roughly 20 percent over last year.
The network confirmed last week that MMOD advertising is already sold out, but potential advertisers have continued to contact the network about opportunities.
Jason Kint, senior vice president and general manager of CBSSports.com, told reporters at a March Madness media conference last week that he expects MMOD users to easily exceed last year's 7.5 million, which was up 58 percent from the previous year.
The network continues to make improvements in the technology. It is introducing new features like a picture-in-picture box that allows users to stream two games at once.
The MMOD site will once again have a "boss button" that, when you punch it, minimizes the streaming games and pulls up what looks like a work document, so that a boss passing by your computer does not know you're actually watching streaming video.
Meanwhile, among the other facts Kantar dug up, March Madness was the second-biggest sporting event in terms of ad spending last year despite the TV ad downturn, behind only the Super Bowl with $753 million. That's well ahead of No. 3, Major League Baseball's postseason, at $391 million.
Only the Super Bowl, at $3 million per 30-second spot, had a higher average commercial price than the NCAA final, which averaged $1.195 million.
That's despite the fact that ratings for the game fell to their lowest level ever among households and the key demo men 18-49.
Last year's North Carolina blowout of Michigan State averaged a 10.6 household rating, according to Nielsen, down 12 percent from the previous year. Among men 18-49, it averaged a 7.9 rating, 0.4 below the previous worst in 2004.
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