This Week in TV News: 2020 Presidential Election TV Ad Spending and In-Store Shopping

This week we’re talking about 2020 election TV ad spending, in-store shopping by Gen Z and millennials (yes, they shop in physical stores) and Premiere Week ratings.

Young people are shopping in-store, actually. The natural assumption would be that younger consumers (millennials and Gen Z) prefer to shop digitally because they’re digital natives who prefer the speed and ease of online shopping. Not so, according to a recent study from Oracle NetSuite, Wakefield Research and The Retail Doctor. Forty-three percent of millennials and Gen Z are likely to increase their in-store shopping this year. The reason may be that they’re shopping for necessities they want immediately, says a senior commerce marketing analyst at NetSuite. (Adweek)

2020 presidential candidate TV spending thus far. FiveThirtyEight is tracking TV ad data for the 2020 presidential election, finding that most candidates haven’t started spending much on TV ads yet. As of late September, the philanthropist Tom Steyer has used TV most, accounting for $12 million of the estimated $15.4 million that had been spent on presidential TV ads. To date, most candidates have been focusing spending on Facebook and Google ads. In 2016, campaigns and organizations were spent $2.4 billion on broadcast TV ads. (FiveThirtyEight)

Broadcast TV ratings for Premiere Week are weak. According to live-plus-same-day data, ratings for adults 18-49, fell 12% year-over-year. On average, the Big Four networks drew 1.75 million members of the demo per night. And our of the 13 new series that aired episodes last week, just one (Fox’s “Prodigal Son”) got a 1.0 rating in the 18-49 demo. (Ad Age)

“Stranger Things” gets a fourth season. Netflix agreed to make another installment of the 80s nostalgia-infused TV show, signing on show creators the Duffer Brothers to a multiyear film and series deal. Netflix said nearly 41 million household accounts watched the show’s July 2019 third-season premiere within four days of it being released. (Adweek)

Read last week’s TV news.