Viewing figures peaked at 33.4m on Tuesday when the USA team was registering a string of successes in swimming and gymnastics, but as Advertising Age noted, that still represented a 13% decline in terms of household rating – from 21.8 to 18.9 – compared to the same evening during the London Games.
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Initial ratings showed smaller audiences than four years ago.
After reporting a drop in prime-time TV viewing for the Olympic Games, NBC released data suggesting that people are just watching in new ways. Although viewership has improved, helped by Monday’s broadcast of popular events such as swimming, the NBC broadcast network’s TV ratings are still down 27 percent in prime time from the London Games in 2012, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. It added an additional $30 million since the competition started, Lazarus said on Thursday.
NBC will use “total audience delivery” to convince advertisers that they’re reaching more viewers than the traditional Nielsen figures indicate. If NBC’s audience falls short of those guarantees, the network may have to give away commercial time to appease advertisers, which the industry calls “make goods”.
NBC is claiming an Olympic gold this morning with live streaming minutes topping 1 billion for the first time ever as of Wednesday.
“Overall our ratings consumption is meeting our expectations”, Lazarus said. “Cable and digital are continuing to grow at a fast rate”.
So, the network has made an adjustment to how it calculates ratings.
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More than 300 brands have bought national ad time across NBC, NBCSN, Bravo, USA Network, CNBC and MSNBC, with the automotive category alone accounting for nearly 20% of all Olympics TV spending.
