Ratings Gold

1 comment August 11th, 2008

Wow. The Opening Ceremonies were unbelievable, weren’t they? NBC Universal thinks so too - seeing the highest rated Opening Ceremonies ever for a non-American Summer Games. It had 19% more viewers than Athens four years ago and 16% more than Sydney eight years ago - and averaged 34.2 million viewers.

With what it paid for the Games ($894 million) NBC Universal is counting on a huge number of eyeballs via myriad platforms…and so are their advertisers, who are financing the games with an estimated $1 billion ad buy. I’m wondering if any local advertisers that signed on for the Olympics will see much return on their investment - ADWire will attempt to check in with them in the coming days and report back.

As far as the ads themselves: Meh. Some were good; others just OK. The Budweiser spot was kind of heavy-handed in its “I Am America” theme - perhaps to blunt the effect of their recent buyout by a Belgium brewery?? My 3-year-old son particularly liked this one from Coca-Cola (Cartoon Birds = toddler fascination):