Advertising

Report: Cable Upfront Marketplace Expected to Come in at $6.9 Billion to $7.3 Billion, Down from $7.7 Billion Last Year

WIth the broadcast upfront marketplace practically done, cable is rolling along and should be finished sometime around the end of the month or the first week in September. Claire Atkinson over at B&C usually has excellent sources on Madison Ave.,…

Half-Completed Syndication Upfront Market Down a Huge 20%

At the end of last week, the syndication upfront market was about 50% completed, and on track to bring in about $2 billion, which would be 20% less than last year, reports Mediaweek. CPM rates are running down about 1%…

In Today’s World of Increasing Ad Clutter, One Cable Network Learns The Art of Getting Viewers to Pay Attention to Ads

By Brian SteinbergAdvertising Age In October 2007, the executive team at the National Geographic Channel huddled together to figure out how their cable outlet was faring under a new ratings metric that measured how many people watched the commercials, not…

Fox on Why It Won’t Air ‘Family Guy’ Episode Dealing With Abortion: “At That moment in Time, There Was a Tough Conversation Going on With [Ad] Clients And We Didn’t Need The Headache’

Rule of thumb: Advertisers shy away from controversy. Corollary: Networks try to keep advertisers happy. This is the business part of the show business equation that most people in Hollywood loathe and don’t usually like to talk about. It came…

Game Changer! CBS Research Guru Poltrack Outlines a Future That Could Transform the Broadcast Business, With Significant Implications for Cable, Local TV and Advertising

CBS Chief Research Officer Dave Poltrack Monday outlined a future for broadcasting that could very well afftect cable, local TV stations and advertising, and thus have a significant impact upon the multibillion-dollar TV industry. As a researcher extraordinaire, Poltrack’s the kind of…

Syndication Upfront Moving, CPMs for Upper Tier Programming Down a Percent or Two

As the long, long, summer sloughs along, there’s finally some upfront movement for syndicators, Mediaweek reports. Syndicators with high demand programming are writing business with cost-per-thousands (CPMs) down 1% to 2%, Mediaweek says. The selling of ad time in programming with not such…

Marie Osmond Will Not Come Back in Syndication this Fall: Victim of Poor Ad Market

Despite being originally cleared by TV stations reaching 80% of the country, Program Partners says the weak ad market prevents its new hour-long talk show with Marie Osmond from launching this fall, Variety reports. One of the problems is that stations…

Scott Donaton, Former Entertainment Weekly and Ad Age Publisher, Named President and CEO of New IPG Branded Entertainment Unit

Scott Donaton has been named president and CEO of Ensemble, a new branded entertainment unit of IPG’s MediaBrands. Ensemble has allied with Michael Kassan’s Media Link, LLC to "help Mediabrands clients leverage a range of strategic branded entertainment opportunities," Mediabrands…

AMC Partners With Eight O’Clock Coffee for ‘Mad Men’ Social Media Promos

AMC, along with gourmet coffee bean maker Eight O’Clock Coffee, has come up with three viral marketing and social media applications to promote the new season of "Mad Men," which starts August 16. One will be a trivia game, "Which MadMan…

Google Partners with Visible World to Make its Auction Based TV Initiative More Attractive

Google has been pushing its auction-based Google TV initiative for some time now. According to the Wall St. Journal, Google "is teaming up with Visible World Inc., a well-known New York technology company that uses software to create multiple versions of a…