TV Ad Spend Weekly: Whip-smart women in Wells Fargo spot win on NFL Championship weekend
Brands continue to invest heavily in above-the-line content, and television is still seen as the place to be. Each week, in partnership with Kantar Media, The Drum looks at which brands have been investing the most on newly-launched creative on US national broadcast and cable TV.
As we reach the endzone for NFL media spending, Kantar highlights a sweet Wells Fargo ad / Kantar Media
Spend on new national TV placements took a dip for the second week in a row during the week ending January 21, 2018. Expenditures for new ads totaled $163 million, a decrease of 13 percent week over week. As the final week of the NFL playoffs before the Super Bowl, airtime during the games came with a hefty price tag. Indeed, despite just two games being played on Sunday, the NFL playoffs were responsible for one third of all new spending for the week, comparable to the previous week when four games drove similar revenues.
As the football season runs towards a Super finish, it's worth noting the new first-down play for brands is heading to the hardwood. The void for prime spots on Sundays and Saturdays will be filled by NBA (and soon NCAA men's and women's basketball). The US Army got a head start this week, getting in front of eyeballs as most of the top spenders shot for the endzone.
Timely with the Patriots AFC championship game, Geico aired it's 1776-meets-2018 spot of Washington crossing the Delaware...highway. More trailers from Warner Bros to get people excited about blockbuster season in summer. The NFL, beleaguered by controversy, took its own opportunity to give a documentary-style PSA showing Super Bowl hopeful Minnesota Vikings giving back to their community.
The biggest sole spender was Wells Fargo this week, debuting the Zelle mobile payment service over the weekend. A runner is caught off guard when he stumbles upon a soccer team bake sale. In an attempt to get off the hook from making a purchase, he says forgot his wallet and doesn’t have a payment app. The young, tech-savvy girls running the stand tell him how he can make online payments straight from his Wells Fargo banking app with Zelle.
Zelle was launched in 2017 and integrated into Wells Fargo’s app in June of last year. This is the first TV ad from the bank promoting the payment capability of Zelle. Wells Fargo used 80 percent of its overall national TV advertising budget for the week to support this ad.
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This data is part of ongoing reporting released on a weekly basis with Kantar Media using its AdScope tool.