FierceWireless has partnered with iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from more than 7 million smart TVs, to bring you a monthly snapshot of the wireless industry's advertising spending. The results below are for the top five spenders among wireless industry brands from Sept. 1-30.
(Check out how these numbers compare with October, November and December of 2016, or with February, March, April, May, June, July and August of this year.)
Here’s how the top brands allocated their national TV advertising budgets:
1. Verizon
- spent an estimated $57.1 million on 12 spots that ran over 7,400 times.
- generated over 2 billion TV ad impressions.
- prioritized spend on these networks: NBC, CBS and NFL Network.
- prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, College Football and "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon."
The Verizon ad with the most spend (est. $29.1 million): “Red Zone,” featuring Odell Beckham Jr.
2. T-Mobile
- spent an estimated $51 million on 14 spots that ran over 9,000 times.
- generated 2.2 billion TV ad impressions.
- prioritized spend on these networks: NBC, Fox and ABC.
- prioritized spend on this programming: College Football, NFL Football and "America’s Got Talent."
The T-Mobile ad with the most spend (est. $28.6 million): “Netflix on Us”
3. Sprint
- spent an estimated $29.7 million on 14 spots that ran over 8,300 times.
- generated 1.5 billion TV ad impressions.
- prioritized spend on these networks: NBC, Fox and CBS.
- prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, "America’s Got Talent" and "MasterChef."
The Sprint ad with the most spend (est. $7 million): “Unlimited: The Whole Family: Fifth Line Free”
4. Boost Mobile
- spent an estimated $22 million on four spots that ran over 5,600 times.
- generated almost 870 million TV ad impressions.
- prioritized spend on these networks: CBS, NBC and Fox.
- prioritized spend on this programming: "Jimmy Kimmel Live," "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" and "Big Brother."
The Boost Mobile ad with the most spend (est. $12.5 million): “Taxes & Fees Included”
5. MetroPCS
- spent an estimated $16 million on seven spots that ran over 5,100 times.
- generated 836.8 million TV ad impressions.
- prioritized spend on these networks: Fox, Univision and NBC.
- prioritized spend on this programming: "American Ninja Warrior," "South Park" and "The Orville."
The MetroPCS ad with the most spend (est. $10.8 million): “Fan: Best Deal in Wireless”
iSpot's data do not include copromotions or local market data. Click here for more on iSpot.tv's methodology.
The company's software leverages proprietary audio and video fingerprinting algorithms to automatically identify and extract TV commercials, movie trailers and show promotions.
The company tracks hundreds of millions of explicit interactions with TV ads across roughly 100 million unique consumers. These interactions include video plays, searches and social activity. The company also analyzes online views across YouTube and iSpot.tv, searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo!, and social activity on Facebook (including Facebook private views) and Twitter.
iSpot.tv tags over 40 different dimensions of metadata, including brand, agency, actors, products, songs, moods, URLs and other pertinent data, to create its results.