The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau wants ad buyers and advertisers to know how huge a part of consumers lives cable is before the decide how to allocate their advertising dollars in the upfront.
The trade association has created a special report called "A Month in the Life of Cable Nation" that uses data from Nielsen and comScore to show the impact cable had during March 2011.
The report found that cable had 84% of the ad supported ratings points for adults 18 to 49 on TV during the month and that 76% of the programming on ad supported cable was original. Cable is also the home of advanced advertising applications, including on-demand overlays, VOD telescoping and a rollout of addressable advertising in New York.
"We wanted to furnish the 15,000-foot view of the heights that ad-supported cable occupies; U.S. consumers have put cable at a level above all others" said Sean Cunningham, CAB CEO and President.
Other finding in the report include:
•The average U.S. household spent nearly one-third of its total waking hours consuming ad-supported cable TV brands.
•80% of ad supported cable was viewed live in DVR households.
•Cable has 68% of primetime ratings points in the 18 to 49 demo, 80% of sports ratings points, 73% of drama, 89% of comedy, 98% of kids and 97% of movies.
•Branded cable sites on the Internet were among the top five trafficked sites in nine different genres, including sports, comedy, weather, news, food, kids, music, entertainment news and TV entertainment.
Last month, an analyst at Barclays Capital said he expects cable to generate $9.23 billion worth of advertising commitments during the upfront, the same amount as the Big 4 broadcast networks.
