How Do Sports' Average-Minute Audiences Compare To Exact-Ad Measurement?

As the importance of sports continues to grow on TV, it's crucial for brands, networks and leagues to understand the value of ads during those events – and the differences between average commercial-minute audience (ACM) metrics and spot-level impressions (SLI). iSpot's new study from Dave Coletti, Every Second Counts, directly addresses these comparisons, and looks at the discrepancies and opportunities between them.

• Looking at the 15 most-active advertisers (five per league) across each the NFL, NBA and MLB, iSpot found significant volatility in terms looking at ACM vs. SLI results – with six of those 15 advertisers seeing meaningful impressions under-delivery.
• The second-leading NFL advertiser, with 31% of their spots run in pods 22-27 over the course of the season (versus an average of 15%), saw a 169 million Spot-Level Impression discrepancy vs. ACM in those pods; but also +53 million-impression surplus in pods 1-21.
• Pod placement was unequivocally the primary issue driving the difference between spot level impressions and average commercial audience. But that's not the case for every game – or every sport, team or timeslot.