About half of the people who are using mobile phones to pull down video or information about the Olympics have been trying out that technology for the first time, NBC said on Wednesday.
NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., has been using the Olympics as something of a research lab to track the adoption of new media technology. Since the opening ceremony last Friday, the company has made content available online, through video on demand and via cell phones along with traditional TV.
The number of people requesting Olympic content over their phones is still relatively small – 494,506 on Sunday and 476,062 on Monday – but NBC executives say they’re stunned at how many of those never used the phones for this purpose before.
“To some extent, the Olympics are beginning to influence how people use new technology,” said Alan Wurtzel, research president for NBC Universal.
By far, however, television is still the prefer red format. Of the estimated 107 million people to experience at least a few minutes of the Olympics on Sunday, 95 percent watched it on TV, NBC said.
Given the choice between a high-definition TV placed before a couch or a small, grainy picture on a computer screen, it’s still a pretty obvious call, Wurtzel said.
NBC’s prime-time ratings are running well ahead of the Athens games in 2004. Through five days, the average prime-time viewership for NBC is 31.3 million, the network said. Interest in Athens started slowly but heated up with gymnastics, while the Beijing games have been a draw from the start.
It has become a communal event that the country has enjoyed sharing, Wurtzel said, a rarity in the day of media fractionalization.
“I don’t think you’re going to see too much of this in the future,” he said.
Americans downloaded some 1.7 million video streams of Monday’s stunning swimming relay where the American team came from behind to beat Fra nce and keep Michael Phelps’ gold medal streak alive. An estimated 1.5 million video streams were e-mailed from one person to another, Wurtzel said.
NBC Universal worried in past Olympics years that its decision to air much of the events on cable outlets like CNBC, MSNBC and USA would siphon interest from prime-time, which is still where the network earns the bulk of its advertising revenue.
But the opposite proved to be true and, this year, the same thing has happened with the digital content, said Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics.
FCB Stays Atop The One Club’s Year-End Global Creative Rankings
FCB ended the year repeating its top positions in The One Club for Creativity’s Global Creative Rankings, with FCB New York again crowned Global Agency of the Year and FCB Global finishing as Agency Network of the Year for 2024.
The annual worldwide benchmark report is a comprehensive ranking of agencies, brands, countries, and individuals based on points earned from winning entries in The One Club’s eight global, regional, and local awards shows: The One Show 2024, ADC 103rd Annual Awards, Type Directors Club TDC70 competition, Art Directors Club of Europe ADCE Awards 2024, ONE Asia Creative Awards 2024, and The One Club Denver, San Diego, and Miami chapter 2024 awards programs.
“The Global Creative Rankings is the industry’s most comprehensive and transparent ranking,” said Kevin Swanepoel, CEO, The One Club. “There are no secret weightings in calculating the rankings, and unlike others, it’s not hidden behind a paywall. As the industry’s foremost nonprofit organization for the global creative community, The One Club is in a unique position to provide this free, definitive measure for global creative excellence to everyone in the industry.”
Highlights of the Global Creative Rankings 2024 are below.
Global Agency Rankings
FCB New York
Rethink Toronto
McCann New York
TBWAMedia Arts Lab Los Angeles
Serviceplan Germany Munich
Dentsu Inc. Tokyo
FCB Chicago
Marcel Paris
VML New York
Ogilvy PR New York, Publicis Conseil Paris (tie)
Independent Agency Rankings
Rethink Toronto
Serviceplan Germany Munich
Wieden+Kennedy Portland
Brand-Side Agency... Read More