Advertising executives said they plan to increase spending on ESPN, according to a report by Beta Research.
Beta said that 60% of the executives it surveyed last fall said they plan to increase spending on the Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, topping No. 2 HGTV, which was named by 52% of the ad execs.
The figures were higher than the survey Beta did in Fall 2020, before the vaccines for COVID-19 were available.
Also high on the ad executives' list were Food Network, Discovery Channel, CNN and TNT.
HGTV, Food Network, and Discovery Channel are all owned by Discovery, CNN and TNT are owned by WarnerMedia. AT&T is spinning off WarnerMedia and selling it to Discovery.
The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.
In the survey 42% of ad execs said they planned to spend more on the average broadcast network, slightly more than named CNN and TNT.
Beta also said that when ad executives evaluated network groups on providing flexibility with deals and pricing on streaming and online ad sales, Discovery came out on top, given high grades by 57% of respondents.
Discovery was followed by WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal Advertising Sales, Disney Advertising Sales, ViacomCBS Advertising Sales and A+E Networks in the survey.
When it comes to being able to evaluate the effectiveness of streaming and online ads, NBCU was No. 1 followed closely by Disney.
Also atop the list were Discovery, WarnerMedia and ViacomCBS.
Beta said it completed 135 interviews with advertising media professionals between July and November of 2021. The study measured 40 basic cable networks and the four major broadcast networks and 12 ad sale organizations. ■
