This weekend’s Super Bowl sees legacy brands return and new players emerge: High consumer spending and TV ratings have both old favorites and new industries buying ad spots.

Learn what the holy grail of connected TV (CTV) might be. "In Other News," we discuss which Nielsen ratings alternatives are leading the pack and what the biggest viewership challenge for baseball is. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Paul Verna.

This report reviews our final 2020 numbers and new 2021 forecast for US time spent with media, highlighting pre- and post-pandemic estimates and expectations. Special attention is paid to TV, connected TV, OTT, digital audio, and social media.

Historically, Nielsen’s C3/C7 ratings system averaged ratings across all commercials in a program, which meant the first ad in the first pod had the same rating as the last ad in the last pod. This can be problematic if, say, an advertiser has a spot in the last commercial pod of a basketball game where one team pulls so far ahead that a portion of the audience stops watching after the third quarter.

NBCU is softening the Olympics’ ratings blow by touting iSpot partnership: Predicting a low turnout, the broadcaster went all-in on flexing new tools to advertisers.

Although a growing percentage of ad spending around TV content is happening through addressable, programmatic, and connected TV channels, making advertising more accountable, holistic campaign metrics that cut across the linear and digital domains remain elusive.

As consumers pivot away from cable and satellite TV, pay TV penetration is declining in Latin America—though at slower rate than in the US.

On today's episode, we discuss what to make of YouTube ad impressions moving over to TV screens, our connected TV ad spending estimates, and how to make TV ads more actionable. We then talk about what's driving Amazon's ad business, whether NBCUniversal can get primetime TV ad rates for slots on Peacock, and what impact Nielsen's new Podcast Ad Effectiveness+ solution will have. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer senior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Eric Haggstrom.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch, and vice president of content studio at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna discuss whether WarnerMedia just killed movie theaters, why Salesforce is buying Slack, why Facebook's buying Kustomer, the first few cases of Facebook's Oversight Board, Nielsen readies to change its TV ratings, shopping carts on WhatsApp, how much cash can fit in your pocket at once, and more.

Nielsen, the de-facto standard for TV ratings and ad measurement for generations, ran afoul of its TV network clients in 2021. The Vab—the trade group for US TV networks—successfully petitioned the Media Rating Council (MRC) to suspend its accreditation of Nielsen’s national TV ratings service.

Early in 2020, as the pandemic was getting underway, Americans flocked to their TV sets at a rate unseen in years. Initially, US households were glued to the news, as uncertainty over the coronavirus drove viewership. In the following weeks, the TVs mostly stayed on, as the initial wave of lockdowns kept Americans stuck on the couch with lots of new time to kill.

Before the pandemic, linear addressable TV ad spending was soaring in the US, with annual growth rates of 50.7% in 2018 and 36.5% in 2019. But that spending increased by just 7.3% in 2020, amid advertising budget cuts in the TV industry.

The not-so super Super Bowl ratings: The game reported about a 5.5% drop in total viewership, but it still draws one of the largest audiences on traditional TV.

Publishers can then direct audiences to product collection pages by including links to the storefront in commerce content that’s distributed on their sites, social media accounts, newsletters, or even within TV segments or podcasts.

On today's episode, we discuss how Disney+ stacks up against the competition and how Disney-owned Hulu and ESPN+ are getting on. We then talk about the Media Rating Council (MRC) taking its accreditation from Nielsen's measurement services, whether national TV ad minutes per hour are going up or down, and if Apple TV+ will ever be able to enter the real streaming wars conversation. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna.

Trend 5: TV and video ad measurement is a hot mess. Long-simmering tensions between TV networks and Nielsen bubbled over in 2021. Nielsen, the de-facto standard for TV ratings and ad measurement for generations, ran afoul of its TV network clients in 2021.

“But now that we have TV data, it’s a lot more complicated because we hadn’t had ad measurement in television up until now. Nielsen will be launching ad measurement this year, but right now advertisers buy television based on the average of all the ads throughout the entire program. The C3 rating is the rating of all the minutes with a preponderance of ads in them, averaged over the entire show.

On today's episode, we discuss how the travel industry is recovering and how the typical traveler has changed. We then talk about the state of the NFL's ratings, how much alternate telecasts can help, and the promise of sports betting. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer associate forecasting analyst Zach Goldner and director of forecasting at Insider Intelligence Oscar Orozco.

The Nordic region has taken to subscription streaming services at some of the fastest rates in Western Europe, and indeed the world. Thanks to the local appetite for foreign content, and these services’ appetite for subscribers, the audience there will keep expanding for the foreseeable future.

Viewers struggled to follow NBC’s schedule for the Tokyo Olympics, which was split across both network TV and Peacock. The event drew its smallest audience since 1988, down 42% from the 2016 Olympics. As a result, NBC had to comp ad space to some advertisers due to the event’s low ratings.