Verizon continues to spend millions of dollars per month on TV ads for its services ahead of the critical fourth quarter holiday shopping season.
FierceWireless has partnered with iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from more than 8 million smart TVs, to bring you a monthly snapshot of the wireless industry's advertising spending. The results below are from Oct. 1-31.
Overall, there were 15 brands that spent an estimated $298.8 million on 121 commercials that aired over 45,300 times and generated 16.1 billion TV ad impressions during the period measured.
Here’s how the top brands allocated their national TV advertising budgets:
1. Verizon
- spent an estimated $80.3 million on 16 spots that ran over 8,800 times
- generated nearly 3.2 billion TV ad impressions
- prioritized spend on these networks: Fox, NBC and CBS
- prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, College Football and the 2018 World Series
The Verizon ad with the most spend (est. $32.1 million): “Test,” Featuring Thomas Middleditch
2. T-Mobile
- spent an estimated $64.4 million on 24 spots that ran over 7,900 times
- generated 2.7 billion TV ad impressions
- prioritized spend on these networks: NBC, Fox and TBS
- prioritized spend on this programming: the 2018 World Series, NFL Football and MLB Baseball
The T-Mobile ad with the most spend (est. $12.2 million): “Hats Off,” featuring Bryce Harper
3. Sprint
- spent an estimated $46.9 million on 19 spots that ran over 7,700 times
- generated nearly 2.3 billion TV ad impressions
- prioritized spend on these networks: NBC, Fox and AMC
- prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, The Walking Dead and the 2018 World Series
The Sprint ad with the most spend (est. $16.3 million): “Try Sprint’s Network”
4. Metro by T-Mobile (formerly MetroPCS)
- spent an estimated $31.7 million on six spots that ran over 3,700 times
- generated almost 1.7 billion TV ad impressions
- prioritized spend on these networks: Fox, NBC and ABC
- prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, NBA Basketball and This Is Us
The Metro by T-Mobile ad with the most spend (est. $21 million): “Wildebeests: MetroPCS is Now Metro by T-Mobile”
5. AT&T Wireless
- spent an estimated $28.3 million on nine spots that ran over 3,100 times
- generated nearly 1.3 billion TV ad impressions
- prioritized spend on these networks: Fox, NBC and CBS
- prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, College Football and the 2018 World Series
The AT&T Wireless ad with the most spend (est. $14.5 million): “The Wait”
iSpot's data do not include copromotions or local market data. Click here for more information 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.