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ESPN to run same ads across linear, digital

ESPN is changing the way it is selling ESPN and ESPN2, telling advertisers that it will run the same commercials across both linear television and its digital simulcasts.

The move marks a significant change in strategy for ESPN, which always has carried different ads digitally and priced each platform separately. Combining linear TV and digital viewership for advertisers should help ESPN’s viewership numbers, which are down this year and expected to drop even more sharply during the Olympics.

ESPN actually started this move last October, when it began simulcasting the same “SportsCenter” ads on television and digitally via WatchESPN. Now, the company is expanding it to the full ESPN and ESPN2 networks — including live event programming.

“As we approached this upfront season, we started thinking that the way people were consuming live through Watch is similar to how they’re consuming it on a linear device,” said Eric Johnson, ESPN’s executive vice president of global multimedia sales. “We thought it would be better to create this as an opportunity to extend reach and take advantage of features and adjacencies and sponsorships and make sure the advertising pods look as clean as they can look.”

The move affects only ESPN and ESPN2. ESPN will continue to sell different digital ad loads for ESPNU, ESPNews and its programming on ABC, which includes college football and the NBA.

“We don’t want to say that one environment is winning over the other,” Johnson said. “We want to be actively involved in both of those environments. We want to test and learn within this.”

Ad buyers say they have been pushing for this change for the past several years and are hopeful that other networks will follow ESPN’s lead. Traditionally, television networks have charged extra for digital advertising on the theory that the typical digital audience is younger and more affluent than the typical television audience. Ad buyers say TV networks largely have stopped charging a premium for digital placements.

“Why should we have to buy both?” one ad buyer said. “We want networks to give us a cume of the audience delivery.”

Johnson, who spearheaded the move internally at ESPN, cited a statistic that said 60 percent of the people using the Watch app to watch “SportsCenter,” watch it over-the-top via a television set. That presented a problem for a show like “SportsCenter,” which integrates sponsors more than other ESPN programs.

“We realized that we had all this great value locked into the sponsorship of ‘SportsCenter,’ but the commercial loads on linear and digital weren’t syncing, which was undercutting the value of the sponsorship,” Johnson said.
Johnson said advertisers reacted well to the “SportsCenter” move, and he expects them to react similarly to ESPN’s fall plans.

“Logically, it made sense,” he said. “It’s extending reach to a coveted audience. Nobody is watching ‘SportsCenter’ on their television and watching ‘SportsCenter’ on their WatchESPN app at the same time. …

“We didn’t have to do this. This is something that we proactively are doing because we think it is the perfect blend and the perfect time for what is happening between television and digital.”

— John Ourand

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