This year; however, Shark Week altered its formula and aired earlier than usual – from June 26 through July 3rd. Other networks smelled blood in the water: would proximity to the July 4th holiday and upcoming summer Olympics take a bite out of ad sales?

Not at all: MediaRadar’s advertising data showed that Discovery Channel had one of the most successful Shark Week years ever. The number of advertisers in Shark Week programming was up 23% from 2015, for a total of 320 brands. The number of TV spots that ran also increased by 35%.

Discovery reeled in viewers for its advertisers with a campaign of online display, native ads, and online video starting a week before the sharks arrived.

Top advertiser categories were retail, with 46 brands placing ads, media & entertainment with 40 brands, and financial services with 26 brands. Other top categories included professional services, home furnishings, and food, followed closely by pharmaceutical and tech. 

AT&T ran the most ads (31 spots). Comcast came in a close second (26 spots), promoting its movie ticket website Fandango and three films it distributes: The Secret Life of Pets, The Purge: Election Year, and Jason Bourne.  

Shark Week Native Ad on Imgur

If advertising is declining for residential real estate, can we really infer there is softness in the market? After all, perhaps less advertising means there is simply less supply for sale. Here’s some more evidence that continues to suggest there is softness.

1. If there was less supply, prices for property would be increasing. But this is not the case. According to Corcoran, one of New York’s largest real estate firms, inventory is up 17% while average sale price is down 7%.*

2. US Housing starts are down 5.3% year-over-year in April 2016, the most recent month available from the US Department of Housing and Development.

3. Advertising in B2B construction trade journals is down.  Trade journals range from Construction Equipment, Pavement Maintenance And Reconstruction, to Concrete Contractor.  Both online and print advertising have contracted by almost 6%.  Almost every media property in the market is down.

4. Caterpillar announced layoffs of 4000-5000 positions, all full-time by the end of 2016.   Most of the impact they say is expected in their US operation. 

[*] The Corcoran Report, Manhattan Monthly Market Snapshot, April 2016

From January to May 2016, there were 1,190 alcohol advertisers buying across print and online. 1,058 of them bought in print. Seventeen percent of print advertisers increased purchases of ad pages. Fifty-two percent are new in 2016. Print is still a powerful medium for alcohol given the strict regulations for digital.

Out of the 1,190 brands this year, Wine is the category leader with 699 advertisers—over twice as high as their nearest competitor, Spirits (313 advertisers). This is not surprising given the boom in the US wine industry, luxury restaurants with wine pairing menus, wine tasting trips, and even wine-inspired spa treatments. Within Spirits, whiskey and vodka brands are the top two sub-categories, respectively with 78 and 65 brands advertising. Overall, it’s not surprising to see that Anheuser-Busch InBev. is the largest advertiser in print, online and TV, however, the beer & cider category is the 3rd largest category with 154 brands.

Although online requires strict regulations for alcohol brands, digital remains a huge, largely untapped opportunity for publishers. The most important guideline says no more than 28.4% of the website audience for an ad may consist of people under 21. For publishers that skew to an older audience, alcohol ads are a great fit. Especially for news sites, home improvement content, parenting sites or finance content. Currently only 21% of alcohol advertisers buy print and online ads.

The real frontrunner are Beer & Cider brands with significant growth in online advertising, up 96% in online placement scores year-over-year. They also invested the most on TV advertising, with an estimated spend of $276 million from January to May 2016. Anheuser-Busch InBev (11 product lines), SABMiller (12 product lines) and Heineken (5 product lines) contributed the most to the growth in both media channels.

Number of real estate advertisers online. 

This is both firms and individual properties placing ads online.

Number of real estate ad pages in magazines and newspapers. 

* Major brands Corcoran, Stribling, Halstead, Sotheby’s, Luxury Portfolio, Douglas Elliman

Methodology:

This looks at advertising placed in NY/NJ/CT or NYC media specifically in Jan-Apr 2016.

It’s especially interesting that print still dominates with the most standalone advertisers at 141,254 compared to only 889 TV-only advertisers.  

Mobile ads are still significantly under-utilized, with most advertisers placing on desktop. 

The biggest takeaway is the amount of opportunity for ad sales teams. Many campaigns still are only integrated across 1-3 touch points. Encourage advertisers to place ads comprehensively across the ad landscape for better results, ROI and brand awareness. 

Where do you stand–are you selling across all media channels?

According to MediaRadar data, in 2015 only 22% of TV advertisers ran ads cross-platform on the four major networks: ABC, FOX, NBC and CBS.

As a result, many TV networks are offering comprehensive packages with digital campaigns for display ads and social media components. Viacom has already announced a partnership with Snapchat that allows MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon to sell ad inventory on the app’s behalf. That includes ads in Snapchat’s “Live Stories.”

NBC Universal introduced Social Sync in 2014 to guarantee advertiser impressions on social media with TV buys. The tool also helps to track paid and organic social campaigns. Time Warner stated they will run fewer commercials for select TNT dramas.

In addition to social media extensions, Disney is creating a micro-content app to launch later this year. The ad-supported app will feature content less than two minutes. Disney also released a Mickey Video app for Apple TV that features short-form videos and classic cartoons as a digital brand extension.

Networks are creating packages that deliver premium content and high CPM ads across multiple screens. As consumers shift from one device to another throughout their day, they will continually be touched by a brand’s messaging and ads. Converged upfronts will set the standard for a seamless, cross-screen experience. As technology grows more sophisticated, we will continue to see advanced segmentation and targeting capabilities across these packaged buys.

For the 2016-2017 season, are you offering digital extensions? Advertisers want more cross-platform packages for desktop, mobile, social and native. Selling ad packages helps differentiate your ad space in the marketplace.

According to MediaRadar data, 4,550 brands placed video ads across 145 websites from March 2015 to February 2016, up by 12% year over year (4,072). And this number is projected to grow enormously in 2016 with $80B forecast to be spent on video and television.

How robust is your online ad inventory? What kind of high CPM ad units do you offer? If you’re not already selling online video ads…you should!

Not only do online video ads have high CPM; they also have high impact with consumers. Share these stats from the Marketing Tech Blog with marketers as part of your pitch.

• 30-second mobile video ads have an 88.3% completion rate
• 92% of B2B customers watch online video
• 34% of shoppers are more likely to purchase after viewing an online video ad

Video ads mean more revenue for you and more exposure for advertisers. Upsell existing digital advertisers or TV advertisers with online video spots today.

Desktop Dominates

Desktop ads still lead in terms of sheer volume of advertisers. There were 17,931 desktop advertisers placing ads on consumer magazine publisher’s websites in Q4 2015. Does this make desktop the inadvertent winner? Desktop ads can be very effective in garnering high reach with a broad audience.

More than half of digital advertisers came from top 5 brand categories–Media & Entertainment, Retail & Wholesale, Professional Service, Technology and Financial & Real Estate. If these categories aren’t already your bread and butter industries, you may want to consider expanding your reach to these low hanging fruits.

Mobile and Native Gaining Traction

While desktop is still king, mobile continues to increase in year-over-year market share with 32% of digital advertisers buying ads on a mobile platform in Q4 2015. In addition, native is quickly gaining traction with native ads growing by 42% in Q4 2015 year over year. What digital ad formats are you selling? Mobile, native and online video are the high performing formats right now!

Auto-Start Video = More Engagement

Video is becoming the new ad format of choice—whether for linear TV or online video. Many publishers are initiating auto-start videos for higher user engagement with 64% of magazine media websites selling auto-start video ads in Q4 2015. Length of time for video ads is also key—but surprisingly, short ads seem to be most popular. Thirty-four percent of video ads sold in Q4 2015 were 15 second spots and 32% were 30 second spots.

Print Stays Strong

Print still has a definitive impact with 9,799 print advertisers placing 34,973 ad pages in national consumer publications in Q4 2015. Encourage advertisers to make the cross platform buy for print, video, mobile and digital to reach users on every touch point.

We forecast continued growth in high CPM ad units such as native and digital with new innovations on the horizon. It is now essential for advertisers to have total cross platform integration across print and digital.

• Underperforming programming – TV shows that aren’t meeting their ratings means bleeding dollars for the advertiser.
• Changing media consumption habits- Some of the most popular shows have been watched in one sitting thanks to the likes of Netflix or Hulu, for example, that is changing how we watch TV. As you can imagine, with more eyes on video streaming websites and less on Linear TV, a shift was necessary to maintain lost dollars.
• Cord-cutting- With the change in viewing habits comes the rise of video streaming subscriptions. It also means, for some consumers, pulling the plug altogether on cable television.
• Appealing video content online – After only 10 years in business, YouTube is now believed to be garnering $7 billion in annual revenue.

Now that MediaRadar has integrated TV ad intelligence into the platform, we’re eager to use our numbers to try and understand the opportunities left outside of traditional TV and Video Streaming websites.

What’s the biggest pain point for ad sales reps? A common problem with the sales processes is developing “air bubbles” in the pipeline. What do I mean by air bubble? When a new relationship or piece of business is coming to a close–particularly one that requires extensive effort at this stage—it’s human nature to focus all efforts on the close and unintentionally ignore everything else. But in doing so, gaps develop at the top of the sales funnel that result in periods of no closed business. This creates boom-bust cycles.

We all know sales people need to commit time to uncovering new prospects on a regular basis and to avoid boom bust cycles.

It takes 21 days to form a habit, so here are some tips to incorporate into your daily routine. Before you know it—they will become second nature. In 2016, let’s say hello to new leads, and goodbye to air bubbles!

• Schedule weekly calendar reminders to review all prospects and strategize how to move them along in the sales process. See MediaRadar’s blog post,“Top 5 Quick Ways to Get Your Sales Email Opened” for ideas, suggestions and best times of the day to reach your prospects.
• Set aside time (at least three hours) each week for follow-up phone calls. Experiment with timing of calls, determine when you get the best response. However, according to InsideSales, you should call your prospects between 4pm-5pm or 8am-10am.
• Work with marketing/client services to send helpful resources—links to datasheets or white papers that prospects can use to grow their business. Or send a link to a recent article or blog related to a prospect’s business.
• Face-to-face still wins. Whenever possible, meet with prospects in-person to show them new inventory, successful campaigns, answer questions or better understand their product lines.
• Be determined. Frequency of touch points keep leads alive. In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts (Source: Telenet and Ovation Sales Group). Reach out 1-2 times per week with a phone call, email or in-person meeting.
• Be a student of their business – We know our prospects get bombarded from sales people. Stand out. Study their business and provide value and insights that they didn’t know. You will be the sales person they call back.
• If your pipeline involves a large number of prospects, maximize your CRM system to maximize your efficiency. Pull key metrics to assess the timing, probabilities, strategies, and next steps for prospects. This will help prioritize too.
• Establish a system that keep leads “alive” and avoids the boom-bust cycles that air bubbles can cause.