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BlogTV and the Olympics

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Share of Time Spent Viewing Streaming Video of the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony Worldwide, by Device, July 23, 2021

TV and the Olympics

A lot is going on in TV today. You may have read about the issues between Nielsen and the Media Rating Council. What may happen is that TV stations begin to look for alternative TV measurement methods. Regardless, the world of ratings is now under review.

Share of Time Spent Viewing Streaming Video of the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony Worldwide, by Device, July 23, 2021Beyond the ratings dustup, the numbers for the Summer Olympics are worth reviewing. You probably read that the Olympics ratings were down: This year’s games averaged 15.5 million viewers nightly across NBC’s primetime and digital offering. Americans tuning in added up to 150 million. It may not be a gold medal Olympics in these COVID times, but it certainly won the silver.

Yet something else caught my eye:

The majority of “streaming viewers of the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony spent the most time watching on desktop computers and mobile phones,”

according to eMarketer.

Streaming captured more than half the time for a combined share of 54%. This is a worldwide number, but it shows that you really need to think omni-screen even for the most significant TV events in the world.

Whether this is a trend, or if these results are COVID-related is the question we will be asking of all 2020 and 2021 marketing efforts. The good news, in just a few months, the winter Olympics in Beijing will feature opening ceremonies on February 4th.

I will get my phone ready.

Mark Mathis III is chief creative & strategy officer, partner and cofounder of AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising.

Written by:

Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.