A slightly better
picture for the Oscars
Ad prices are up this year, and ratings should be
By Diego Vasquez
Mar 2, 2010
The last time director James Cameron had a blockbuster contending for best picture, the Oscars drew their biggest-ever audience, 55.2 million in 1998 when "Titanic" won the top prize. This Sunday, with Cameron's box office record holder "Avatar" up for nine awards, Academy Awards viewership is expected to be up over last year, though probably not at record levels. After all, the Oscars have lost some of their shine in recent years. In 2008, airing just days after the crippling writers' strike came to a close, ABC's Academy Awards slid to a record low of 32 million viewers. Last year viewership rebounded slightly, but advertising took a hit, with total revenue dipping 16 percent from the previous year to $68 million, its lowest level since 2003, according to a report from research group Kantar Media, formerly TNS Media Intelligence. With longtime advertisers such as General Motors skipping the ceremony, ABC had a slew of first-time advertisers, including movie studios, who were allowed to hawk their films for the first time on an Oscars broadcast, albeit amid tight restrictions. This year Oscar pricing is reportedly up, and ABC is hoping that some changes to the broadcast itself, such as skipping the best song nominee performances, will also help lift ratings for the show, which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. with hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research at Kantar Media, talks to Media Life about Oscar viewership, advertising and how the show has avoided commercial clutter.
Awards shows and "event" television generally have been doing very well this TV season, seeing big gains over last year. Do you think the Oscars will be up from last year, and do you think they can rise to historical highs on the strength of "Avatar," the top-grossing film of all time?
Last year’s show posted the third-smallest household rating in the history of the event. The prior year (2008) was the all-time low. The 2010 telecast will benefit from interest in “Avatar” and the expanded list of best picture nominees.
While audience growth from last year is a sure bet, I think the program’s ratings will still end up in the bottom five of all-time. That’s testimony to how far Oscar ratings have sunk over the past decade.
The Winter Olympics have also drawn attention away from the Oscars and left a very short window for the event to generate buzz and interest.
Do you expect ad rates to creep up this year after a tumble last year? Why or why not?
I expect the average price of a :30 unit will be up 7 to 10 percent versus the basement levels of a year ago when overall demand for ad time collapsed and high-priced inventory was particularly vulnerable.
The expectation of improved ratings will also support higher pricing.
Are some of the marketers who dropped the Oscars last year ready to return, or will it take another year or two for that to happen?
General Motors dropped out last year and was replaced by Hyundai as the exclusive auto category sponsor. As long as Hyundai chooses to hold on to that sponsorship, it can keep GM and every other car advertiser on the sidelines.
Other long-time sponsors opted to reduce their positions in the 2009 show but still remained in the program. Whether they restore their ad buys to previous levels remains to be seen.
Why does the Academy have such tight restrictions on film marketing in the show? Wouldn't it attract more advertising by loosening them even further?
Until 2009, the Academy did not allow any motion picture advertising in order to avoid even the slightest appearance that studios had influence over the awards.
The current rules now permit movie advertising but restrict it to films that open after the last weekend of April, a very long lead time by studio marketing standards. Even if rules were liberalized further, it’s unlikely that a glut of movie advertising would result.
The number of new releases in March-April and the demographics of the Oscars viewer work against this ad category.
There was a huge number of new advertisers last year. Do you expect to see more this year, and are a lot of those new advertisers returning?
One-third of the advertisers in 2009 were first-timers, an unusually large proportion. One of these was Hyundai, which was the top advertiser in the program with four and a half minutes of ad time. They’ll be back again this year.
Several of last-year’s newbies will not return but they in turn will be replaced by a new crop of first-timers. In all, I expect at least 25 percent of the advertiser roster to be composed of freshman.
What's the general profile of an Academy Awards advertiser -- who are they trying to reach, why is this show a good fit for them?
The Oscars audience is about 60 percent female and has an upscale skew compared to other TV programming.
It’s attractive to a wide variety of advertisers ranging from mass marketers (e.g., restaurants, soft drinks, department stores) to those seeking a more selectively targeted audience (e.g., auto, financial services).
Is there a lot of crossover between Oscar advertisers and advertisers for other awards shows?
Not a lot.
The high price tag for Oscars ad time and the limited amount of commercial inventory combine to produce a more compact advertising footprint as compared to the Golden Globes or Grammy Awards.
Why, in an era of increasing commercial clutter (just see the Super Bowl), has the Academy Awards maintained such an uncluttered environment?
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences dictates how much ad time can appear in the program, and it has kept the commercial load at around 8-9 minutes per hour.
Why so little? The tongue in cheek explanation is that fewer interruptions mean more time on screen for the Hollywood glitterati. Got to keep the talent happy, right?
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