Verizon dominated digital advertising in the wireless industry lately, generating roughly 57 percent of the overall response including online views, searches and social actions, according to iSpot.TV.
FierceWireless has partnered with the ad-tracking firm iSpot.TV to provide regular snapshots of the wireless industry's advertising spending and digital engagement. The company said 19 wireless industry brands ran 110 TV spots more than 50,000 times during the 30-day period ending Sept. 15, racking up an estimated media spend of $270.5 million. Verizon ran 13 spots and spent “the vast majority of its attention” on “The Best Network Just Got Better,” which features Jamie Foxx and was viewed nearly 4.5 million times.
Sprint generated 18 percent of the industry’s digital response to TV ads during the 30-day stretch, second only to Verizon. The company’s 16 ads generated 1.1 billion TV impressions and 4 million online views, as well as 53,000 searches and 13,600 social actions. Its most engaging ad was “Hyped,” which features a former Verizon spokesman.
T-Mobile’s TV ads garnered the third-highest digital response, although its “Love Triangle” spot featuring Nicki Minaj was the second-most engaging wireless industry ad on TV. That commercial, which touts the carrier’s new unlimited data plan, generated more than 390 million TV ad impressions and 5,500 social actions, “almost entirely from the 18-34 demographic,” iSpot.TV said.
AT&T, which consistently ranked as the biggest advertising spender among U.S. wireless carriers earlier this year, earned less than 7 percent of the industry’s digital response to TV ads during the period, iSpot.TV said. The operator ran 16 commercials more than 9,000 times on national TV, spreading its spending across 84 networks and 1,412 shows, generating 1.14 billion TV ad impressions. Its top ad, “In Control,” generated nearly 50 percent of the carrier’s total response.
Finally, MetroPCS rounded out the top five advertisers in wireless during the period, accounting for 2.2 percent of the overall digital response to the industry’s national TV ads. T-Mobile’s prepaid brand ran six spots more than 4,000 times, and it continued to target Sprint users with its ad “Hop Out of the Sprint Nightmare,” which claimed “the overwhelming majority” of MetroPCS’s online response.