Industry veteran Ben Tatta was named chief commercial officer of Operative.

Tatta was previously president of Standard Media Index, which was acquired earlier this month by GTCR, which installed Scott Knoll as CEO of SMI.

Before joining SMI, Tatta helped Kristin Dolan and Dolan Family Venture launch the measurement firm 605 in 2016.

Tatta earlier had spent 10 years with Cablevision Systems, rising to president of Cablevision Media Sales. He also held posts at USA Network, IBM and CapCities/ABC.

Operative also said that it hired Michael Grossi, who has run enterprise software companies as its new CEO.

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Former CEO Lorne Brown will remain a member of the board and focus on market development and investment strategy.

“I’ve been following Operative as a leading player in this industry for many years, with a renewed focus over the past few years as they continue to bring new transformational capabilities to market with their AOS platform,” Tatta said. “When Lorne and Michael approached me about leading Operative to the next level of scale and growth, it was not only a very logical fit based on my experience but also an exciting opportunity to help transform the way media companies do business.” ■

National television advertising spending rose 9% in January from a year ago, according to new data from Standard Media Index.

The January gain left TV spending up 0.1% from January 2020, months before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in America.

SMI said that broadcast TV was up 19%, while cable was down 3%.

The overall advertising market across all media was up 19% in January from a year ago.

As usual, digital was a big gainer, jumping 27% .Over two years, digital spending has increased 43%.

But out-of-home had an even bigger increase at 133% compared to last year. Newspapers were up 40% and radio was up 21%.

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Magazines were down 31%. Over two years, magazine ad revenues have plunged 54%.

The biggest spending advertiser category was tech, up 31%. CPG was up 2% and pharma increased spending by 8%. Autos were down 7%, but retail came back with a 29% bump and travel rebounded with spending climbing 266%. 

Standard Media Index gets it spending data from invoices at all of the major media agency holding companies and most major independents, representing 95% of national brand ad spend. ■

Ad intelligence company Standard Media Index said it named Jason Keown as VP, marketing, a new position.

Keown, who had been head of accounts at Community Agency in Canada and a volunteer advisor to MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, will focus on expanding SMI’s business in North America.

SMI has been growing its management ranks, having hired Ben Tatta as president of the U.S. market in July.

“Standard Media Index is on an exciting growth trajectory and we are working to ensure we have the right talent in place to accelerate our business globally. Canada is our fifth global market and an important one for us as we capture more than 94% of all national brand spend and have deep relationships with all the major agency holding groups and leading independents,” said James Fennessy, global CEO of SMI. “Jason’s vast experience within the Canadian media landscape will allow us to build strategies to grow our presence in the market, while using his marketing and digital expertise to drive our global vision.” 

Keown will report to Fennessy.

Over the course of his 20 year career using data and insights to build businesses, Keown has held posts with ad agencies DDB, Y&R and Cossette Communications, marketers including Burger King and Office Depot and TV companies Shaw Communications and Global Media.

“Standard Media Index is bringing a new level of data and transparency to the Canadian media market that has never before been available. Through my past experience with Shaw Communications, Global Media and other specialty cable channels, I understand the exponential value this data provides both broadcasters and agency partners,” said Keown. “I recognize the massive opportunity to embrace the use of our data to evolve and benefit the media industry. I’m looking forward to building awareness of the company and promoting our powerful products to the North American market.”

Television ad spending was down 40.9% to $1.4 billion as the COVID-19 pandemic throttled business, particularly sports, according to research company Standard Media Index.

SMI said that local advertising was most affected. Spot TV dropped 58.8% to $101.2 million and local cable plunged 75.5% to $22.3 million.

National broadcast TV was down 37.5% to $425.4 million and national cable fell 39% to $656.9 million.

Digital advertising was less affected, with total digital advertising down 22.5$ to $1.4 billion and digital video down 22.9% to $278.9 million

Sports was a big factor in the April numbers as the NBA and NHL stopped playing, Major League Baseball never started and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament was cancelled.

Sports programming ad revenue was down 72.1% to $93.7 million, compared to non-sports programming, which was down 30.2% to $1.14 billion.

With no Olympic Games airing this summer, national TV ad spending was down 27% in August, according to the latest figures from Standard Media Index.

Spending on broadcast was down 54% in the month. Of the TV ad spending on the Olympics last year, 92% went to broadcast with only 8% going to cable. Still, cable ad spending was down 1% for the month, according to SMI.

On cable, ESPN was up 27% from a year ago, with the sports leader airing NFL preseason games and more of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships taking place in August. ESPN also got higher rates for Major League Baseball games.

Other cable networks showing gains included Discovery Channel, jumping 16%; Food Network, taking a 10% bigger bite; TBS, up 5%; and HGTV, edging up 1.5%.

SMI said ad revenue at the cable news networks continued to grow, but at less intense rate. Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN as a group were up 6%, but for the first time this year, Fox News was down, taking in 2.5% less than a year ago. MSNBC was up a whopping 26% and CNN was up 8%.CNN was up 8% and MSNBC.

So far this year, the cable news networks are up 19%, with MSNBC up 41%, CNN up 18% and Fox News up 15%. SMI noted that MSNBC started the year with the lowest average commercial prices, creating the opportunity for a steeper percentage gain.

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Among the Big 3 broadcasters, NBC, which aired the Rio games a year ago, was down 82% in August ad revenue. With the NFL season starting and no Olympic competition, CBS was up 17% and Fox was up 14%. ABC was down 1%.

Among the Spanish-language broadcast networks, Univision was up 3%, while Telemundo, which aired the Olympics in Spanish, was down 7%.

Strong performers in the month included ABC’s The Bachelorette. The price for spots on the reality show was up 50% to $131,000 from a year ago and the series brought in nearly 80% more revenue. The summer run of Saturday Night Live fetched $124,000 per spot.

The total ad market was down 7% in August compared with a year ago when the Olympics were going on. So far in 2017, ad spending is up 2.4%, compared with the first eight months of 2016.

Despite the lack of the games, digital was up 12%.

“The Olympics in August 2016 make meaningful year-on-year comparisons tricky, but our data did show some insights that are worth focusing on," said James Fennessy, CEO of Standard Media Index. "The overall market is up 2.4% on a year-to-date basis, with only a 4% year-to-date loss on TV, which shows that a lot of Olympics dollars had been redirected into the Games from existing budgets.

“And, while the digital market has started to recover from the brand safety concerns earlier this year, there is no doubt that growth has been impacted and publishers like YouTube are looking at more modest growth in the 10% region for the current quarter," Fennessy added.

Ad spending on national TV rose 0.9% in the first quarter, according to new figures from research company Standard Media Index.

The auto industry put the brakes on TV’s rate of growth, reducing its spending by 12.4% or about $143.6 million. Also cutting spending in the quarter was the consumer electronics industry, whose spending was down by $73.1 million, and the entertainment industry, down $69 million.

Categories that increased spending in the quarter included quick-service restaurants, up 12%, prescription drugs, up 17.1%, and insurance companies, up 10%.

Spending on cable was relatively flat, with SMI finding a -0.7% change from Q1 2016.

Among the best-performing cable programmers was Scripps Networks Interactive, whose HGTV was up 17.9%, Food Network was up 10.3%, and Travel Channel was up 16.5%. HGTV’s Fixer Upper generated 38.2% more revenue than a year ago. Discovery Channel was up 10%.

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Cable news also remained hot during the beginning of the Donald Trump administration. CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel together gained 16% in the quarter. But spending was down slightly from the fourth quarter, when the election was held.

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MSNBC is seeing the greatest gains, up 49.5% in spending, led by a jump in ratings for The Rachel Maddow Show.

Spending on national TV advertising dropped 2% in the fourth quarter, according to new figures from research company Standard Media Index.

Broadcast ad spending was down 2% to $4.8 billion, while cable networks saw a 1.6% fall to $6.8 billion in the quarter, which started slowly but showed improvement in December.

The decline reflects a big drop in upfront commitments made by advertisers. SMI says the value of commercials bought in the upfront fell 7%. Broadcast was down 8% and cable was down 7%.

The networks were able to make up some of that shortfall in scatter. SMI says fourth quarter scatter was up 34% for the broadcasters and 23% for cable networks.

Among the broadcast networks, NBC had the largest share and grew its sales by 3% in the quarter. CBS' sales were up 2%. Telemudo sales were up 5%. Fox ad sale were down 12% in the quarter, Univision was off 6% and ABC dipped 2%, according to SMI.

ESPN, the ad sales leader in cable,  was up 3%. AMC Networks registered a 28% gain, while Viacom's collection of channels was up 2%.

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