New York, NY, January 15, 2010 – The countdown is on to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, to be held in Vancouver from February 12-28, 2010. Spectators and TV viewers around the world will watch the athletes compete on snow and ice where the ever-present danger of a crash or fall adds to the drama. In another competition, advertisers will go head-to-head and try to leverage the Olympics for the benefit of their brands. Like the athletes, the sponsors also hope to cross the finish line without slipping and earn gold.

“While the Winter Olympics have not had the same impact or audience as the Summer games, they are an important and unique platform for advertisers,” says Mark Nesbitt, President of TNS Media Intelligence. “With the expanded hours of coverage available due to broadcast of events on the sister cable channels of NBC, the opportunity presents itself for a broad and diverse cross-section of advertisers to stake a presence.

TNS Media Intelligence has mined its extensive database to compile a variety of statistics and insights on Winter Olympic advertising.

TV Ad Revenue vs. Rights Fees
TV ad expenditures in the Winter Olympics have increased as the networks add inventory through more hours of coverage (primarily on their sister cable channels) to help offset escalating rights fees. Production costs are a further expense. For the Vancouver games, NBC has told investors it expects to lose money.

1 TV ad revenue includes broadcast network plus cable network
Sources: TNS Media Intelligence; USA Today; NBC; IOC

TV Rights Fees Have Increased Three-Fold In Twenty Years
Domestic television rights fees for the Winter Olympics are typically 30-40 percent lower than the Summer games, reflecting the narrower audience appeal of winter sports. Both sets of games have achieved a trebling of rights fees over the past six quadrennial cycles.

Sources: USA Today; NBC; IOC

More Hours Of Coverage Equals More Ad Inventory
As TV coverage of the Winter Olympics has expanded, so has the supply of commercial inventory and the volume of ads aired:

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

NBC has said it will air over 800 hours of coverage from Vancouver on its broadcast and cable networks, or more than double the amount it transmitted in 2006. If the proportion of commercial time remains constant, the 2010 Olympics could contain upwards of 9,000 total ad minutes.

Ad Pricing
The overall average price for a 30 second unit in the 2006 Winter Olympics was $224,600. The amount paid by individual marketers can vary considerably depending on how much ad time is purchased, the mix of premium and non-premium inventory, packaging of the Olympics with other programming on the network’s schedule inventory and other negotiable factors.

One outcome of more programming hours is audience dilution as viewers distribute their Olympic tuning across the spectrum of available channels and hours. The fragmented audience holds down the average price per unit, even as it leads to more total revenue.

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

More Advertisers Are Participating In The Winter Olympics
The extra inventory has enabled more advertisers to buy time in the event. However, a small number of marketers enjoy dominant positions. On average, the top five advertisers have recently accounted for more than 30% of total ad spend and the top ten have been about 50% of the gross dollar volume.

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

Leading Advertisers
The top ten advertisers in the 2006 Torino games spent a total of $413.5 million to pitch their messages at viewers. In each Olympics (Winter and Summer), most of the highest spending advertisers also have top-level sponsorship deals with either the global International Olympic Committee (IOC) or the domestic United States Olympic Committee (USOC) that confer additional marketing opportunities, including use of the Olympics rings symbol.

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

Top Ad Categories
The leading ad categories in the Winter Olympics are a reflection of the Top Advertiser list, since many of those elite companies have exclusivity deals that limit access by their main rivals. The Top 5 categories in 2006 invested $403.2 million and accounted for almost 49% of the total TV ad revenue

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

The Health of the Olympic Brand
The Olympic brand is experiencing some duress as several large marketers have opted to drop their expensive sponsorship deals with the IOC or USOC as they’ve come up for renewal during the past two years. Both organizations have found it tough to sign replacement sponsors, given the austere economic climate and concerns about the ROI of the Olympic-size expenditure.

Since 2008, four companies have declined to renew their IOC partnerships – Lenovo; Johnson & Johnson; Kodak; and Manulife. Only one replacement has come on board – Acer, the Taiwan-based PC manufacturer.

In the same period, the USOC has lost Bank of America, General Motors and Home Depot as top-tier partners, while signing on Procter & Gamble.

About TNS Media
Established in more than 30 countries, TNS Media explores all media - print, radio, TV, Internet, social media, cinema and outdoor worldwide, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and offers a full range of insights, analyses and audience measurement services.

TNS Media combines the deepest expertise in the industry to provide media and marketing intelligence including advertising expenditure monitoring, advertising creation monitoring, audience measurement, market influence analytics, online consumer behavior tracking, news monitoring, sports sponsorship evaluation and more.  The TNS Media companies track more than 3 million brands and provide vital market intelligence to 16,000 customers around the world. For further information, please visit www.tnsmediagroup.com

About Kantar
Kantar is one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy networks. By uniting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 26,500 employees work across 95 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The group’s services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies.