Powered by NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Olympics, TV ad spending jumped 40% to $3.5 billion in August, according to new figures from research company Standard Media Index.
Broadcast spending for the month was up 1.6%, with cable showing an 8% gain.
Spending on NBC was up 290% thanks to Rio, giving the Peacock network a 66% share of the broadcast market. A year ago, it has a 23% share of the market, SMI said.
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NBCU’s digital properties also posted a big gain, rising 131% from a year ago.
August was a huge month for scatter spending, up 101% from a year ago. Scatter ad accounted for 33% of the market. The value of ad bought in the upfront was up 22%.
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Year to date total TV spending is up 7% from a year ago.
Total ad spending across all media was up 24.8% in August, according to SMI.
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Digital spending was up 16.4%. So far this year, digital spending is up 15% and digital has a 33.8% share of the advertising pie.
Advertising on pure-play video was up 41.5%. Social media sites were up 53.1%
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Among the biggest gainers in the digital space were Snapchat, up 683%, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube. Yahoo also posted a 55% increase.
Print was down, with newspapers dropping 23.5% in August and magazines facing a 7.9% decrease.
SMI gathers its data from the computers systems of most of the biggest media agencies representing 70% of total spending in the U.S.
