That collective sigh of relief you heard recently came from Academy Award television advertisers. They were glad to see that their commitment of some $1.8 million on average for a :30 time slot during ABC’s Oscar telecast on Sunday (2/24) could prove to be a worthwhile investment after all thanks to the end of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike earlier this month.
Sans picket lines, the Academy Awards event will be back to its star-studded norm, drawing a mega-sized primetime audience and again justifying its claim to being the Super Bowl of advertising for the female demographic.
Among the most relieved is Unilever which will air user-generated spots for its Dove Cream Body Wash. Dove conducted an online contest asking women to upload their own body-wash product commercials at dovecreamoil.com. The competition drew some 3,500 entries, which public online voting culled down to the two spots which will air on the Oscars this Sunday.
Other advertisers slated for Oscar include: General Motors which is the sole auto sponsor of ABC-TV’s broadcast; Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, American Express, JCPenney, Bertolli frozen dinners (another Unilever product), L’Oreal, Mars, McDonald’s and MasterCard.
Though the writers’ strike dashed the television ad hopes of the Golden Globes telecast on NBC (which was reduced to a press conference) and the People’s Choice Awards on CBS, interest in these events has heightened as of late in the marketing community, primarily because they tend to get audiences watching live television as opposed to spot-skipping DVR recordings. The Super Bowl and the Oscars are at the pinnacle of must-see live TV, carrying the guarantee of mass viewership in an age of otherwise often fragmented audiences.
And with primetime TV in a reruns morass due to the WGA strike, the appeal of original content like the Academy Awards ceremony has grown that much stronger.
The aforementioned $1.8 million average per :30 slot represents about a seven percent increase over last year’s price tag.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More