The top advertisers in the wireless industry significantly raised their collective spending on TV advertisements during the month of November—which doesn't come as much of a surprise considering the critical holiday shopping season kicked off during the month with both Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Specifically, according to real-time TV ad measurement company iSpot.tv, spending among the nation's top wireless brand advertisers reached a collective $290 million during the month of November. That's above the $263 million they spent during the month of September and the $222 million they spent during the month of July.
However, during the month of October, those brands spent a collective $298 million, according to iSpot.tv.
Regardless, 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 for Nov. 1-30.
In total, there were 16 brands that spent an estimated $290.5 million on 150 commercials that aired over 58,200 times and generated nearly 17.6 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 $71.1 million on 25 spots that ran over 9,900 times
- generated over 3.2 billion TV ad impressions
- prioritized spend on these networks: NBC, CBS and Fox
- prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, College Football and the 92nd Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
The Verizon ad with the most spend (est. $20.9 million): “Test,” featuring Thomas Middleditch
2. T-Mobile
- spent an estimated $54.4 million on 25 spots that ran over 10,500 times
- generated 2.6 billion TV ad impressions
- prioritized spend on these networks: NBC, Fox and ABC
- prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, College Football and The Walking Dead
The T-Mobile ad with the most spend (est. $11.6 million): “Apple iPhone XR: Emojis”
3. Sprint
- spent an estimated $52.5 million on 20 spots that ran over 10,800 times
- generated nearly 2.7 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 Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
The Sprint ad with the most spend (est. $11.6 million): “Sprint Across America: iPhone XR”
4. AT&T Wireless
- spent an estimated $27.2 million on nine spots that ran over 3,200 times
- generated almost 1.3 billion TV ad impressions
- prioritized spend on these networks: Fox, ABC and ESPN
- prioritized spend on this programming: College Football, NFL Football, College Football Scoreboard
The AT&T Wireless ad with the most spend (est. $13.6 million): “The Wait”
5. Metro by T-Mobile (formerly MetroPCS)
- spent an estimated $26.3 million on 13 spots that ran over 5,500 times
- generated 1.6 billion TV ad impressions
- prioritized spend on these networks: Fox, ABC and NBC
- prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, NBA Basketball and Family Guy
The Metro by T-Mobile ad with the most spend (est. $9.6 million): “Bears”
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.