Ad Age

I forgot to mention in the last post -- I have a story in the Voice this week on the Jets, the Giants, and my continuing inability to get interested in football. And, speaking of plugs...

One interesting note on the NFL: on his blog (link via Deadspin), Mike Harding tallied up the ad time for the Chiefs/Colts game last weekend and finds that the program featured 86 minutes of content, and 80 MINUTES OF ADS... and that's not counting plugs and product placement.

There were 80 minutes of dedicated ad time in the programming, amounting to 48% ad time and 86 minutes of content accounting for the other 52% of programming. Within the 86 minutes of content time, there were 218 plugs (142 of which were “fast plugs”) - or a plug every 22 seconds. This is exclusive of the scoreboard crawler/ticker which was nearly continuously displayed with NBC and NFL logos.

Even backing out the fast plugs, the NBC logo with accompanying sound at the start and finish of each replay, there were 76 “regular” plugs in the 86 minute content time meaning there was a plug every 68 seconds. A total of 63 distinct advertisers paid for the ads, plugs, and fast plugs in this 166 minutes. Now wonder my brain was jello by the time this broadcast was completed.

I'm not sure I would have counted the "fast plugs" -- the mere appearance of the NBC logo. Nevertheless, that's a truly staggering figure.

When the season starts, I'll definitely have to measure the percentage of ad time in the average baseball game -- I'm sure it's high, but I'd bet not quite at the NFL level. Isn't it only a matter of time, though? What would you estimate? And at what point, if any, will you stop watching?