Media Buying Briefing: How buyers see Q4 scatter activity affecting 2022 spending across TV and digital

By Michael Bürgi

Although the fourth-quarter national ad marketplace has shown some softness due to both media-related and external factors, for the most part there’s enough momentum from advertisers wanting to spend the last of their 2021 ad budgets to enter next year with some momentum. Whether that momentum can be sustained throughout 2022 remains to be seen.

A check-in with a handful of heads of investment at major media agencies reveals that some big clients who purchased upfront inventory at steep increases in cost-per-thousand viewers (CPM), have exercised their “options” to return some of that inventory to the networks they bought it from. That’s dropping the rates for Q4 scatter inventory, although they are said to remain above upfront pricing.

“As much as we’d like to think the pandemic has ended, there’s still pressures from the pandemic that exists on certain entities,” said Geoff Calabrese, chief investment officer for Omnicom Media Group.

Cara Lewis, executive vp and head of U.S. investment for Dentsu, said she hasn’t seen a significant pullback in spending among her clients, but “some had to [exercise options] for business purposes. In terms of scatter, some brands need to buy and pick off some individual inventory as needed, but I haven’t seen a flooding of the marketplace — I’ve heard it’s pretty soft.”

Specifically, some automakers are said to have returned TV inventory, as a result of lingering chip shortages that’s inhibiting the production of new cars. Pharmaceutical advertisers, a mainstay of linear TV advertisers, are also said to have pulled back a bit due to the increase in Telehealth appointments consumers are making. And movie studios, while spending more than they did in 2020 (when theaters were closed for the most part), are still holding back some spend since box-office results haven’t recovered as much as they would like.

Within linear TV, the last remaining source of strength remains in live sports, whose ratings have generally bounced back following serious dips in tentpole sports events at the height of the pandemic. “We have seen live sports continue to be extremely popular,” said Calabrese. “Advertisers are still interested in big events such as the Super Bowl and the Olympics. The rest of spend flattens out a bit when you have such dominant programming.”

Surprisingly, the rest of linear TV viewing hasn’t dropped off as precipitously as it has in recent quarters, said Dave Campanelli, executive vp and chief investment officer at Horizon Media. “The linear networks aren’t in as dire a situation” as they were in 2020 or even before. Yes, ratings are down across the board, he added, but the networks were more accurate in guessing the drop-off. “This quarter it’s different than in recent years when they were too optimistic in their estimates,” said Campanelli.

Still, the rest of the video environment, from connected TV and streaming to digital out-of-home video to even user-generated content, appears to be benefiting the most from any advertiser pullback on linear TV, whose audience continues to erode. “The shift to …read more

Source:: Digiday