NBC shoehorns over 3,000 promos into Olympic coverage

If you’ve watched NBC’s Olympic coverage, you’ve noticed plenty of promos for in-house programming. While advertisers are seeing lower ratings for the Rio Olympics compared to other Olympiads, NBC is certainly making sure that viewers know of their upcoming programs.

Advertising Age’s Anthony Crupi notes that one ad monitoring site counted more than 3,000 promos for NBCUniversal programming for the first 12 days of the Olympics. The promos range for NBC primetime programs like the new “Timeless,” which have run across all networks airing Olympic events to hyping Sunday Night Football.

Even though ratings are down for the Rio Games, there’s no doubt that the 19 days of competition are a great promotional platform for programming. According to iSpot.tv, “Timeless” has been promoted 266 times since August 5 on NBCUniversal channels from tennis on Bravo to NBC’s primetime coverage.

The other beneficiary of Olympic-hype has been the upcoming season of Sunday Night Football which has had various players like Victor Cruz, Kam Chancellor and Dez Bryant along with Carrie Underwood appear to promote the new season:

Asides spots for “Timeless,” “This Is Us,” “The Good Place,” and even “The Tonight Show,” NBC Sports properties such as NASCAR, Thursday Night Football, Notre Dame Football and the English Premier League have had heavy rotation for their promos across the coverage.

And there have been promos for NBCUniversal networks Bravo, USA, Golf Channel and MSNBC as well. Ad Age notes that there have been little to no ads for other NBCUniversal networks Chiller, Cloo TV, Esquire, Oxygen, Sprout or Universal HD.

So NBC is pulling out its promotional power for the Rio Games, but compared to London, iSpot.tv says it’s about on the same level as in 2012. But the key here is that London became on the most-watched television event in U.S. TV history and Rio may see some make-goods in the last weekend of the Games, reducing the amount of promos.

However, NBC is still hoping that viewers to the Olympics will lead to increased sampling of its fall schedule when it premieres in September.

[Advertising Age]