As the holiday shopping season closes in, we took a look at TV advertising trends surrounding a hotter-than-ever product category: smart speaker/displays for the home, and in particular the Amazon Echo, Google Home and the newest to market, Facebook Portal.
Data from iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from more than eight million smart TVs, reveals an interesting common strategy: these advertisers are more likely to spend big but air fewer ads than other top-spending brands — in other words, they’re making premium TV ad buys — and all three had the biggest budgets allocated to the NFL.
In the last 30 days, Facebook has spent an estimated $59.4 million — more than twice the spend from either Amazon Echo or Google Home —to air eight Portal commercials 617 times, generating nearly 2.1 billion impressions and making it the eighth highest-spending brand on TV overall for the period measured. Facebook has been focused on reaching sports-loving audiences, with major budgets allocated to the NFL, College Football and the 2018 World Series.
Much further down the list at No. 44 is Google Home, which has spent about $27.7 million on 15 ads that have aired 972 times, resulting in 950.4 million impressions. Although the NFL tops the list for programming spend, Google also shelled out big during the 92nd Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, with a collection of Friendsgiving-themed ads starring Amy Poehler, Amy Sedaris, Maya Rudolph, Chelsea Peretti and Tiffany Haddish.
And finally there’s Amazon Echo, the 49th highest-spending brand in the last 30 days with an estimated budget of $25.9 million for 1,451 airings of 10 ads. The NFL accounts for almost half of its total spend.
