AD $$ GOES SOFT
Viagra, Cialis exit NFL, other sports
“Will you be ready when the moment is right?” the Cialis pitchman asks in the once ubiquitous commercial.
Viewers of TV sports won’t have to listen to those cringeworthy words for much longer as the maker of the erectile-dysfunction drug and the maker of its rival, Viagra, have begun to pull back on TV commercial spending.
The patents on both drug are expiring and generic versions are set to flood the market.
While some NFL fans may rejoice at the chance of watching games without having to sit through those ads, sports leagues and networks will certainly miss the cash.
Viagra spent $100 million on TV over the past year, according to iSpot.tv.
In fact, Viagra hasn’t aired a TV spot since May 15, according to Advertising Age, which first reported on the pullback.
Pfizer, which makes Viagra, didn’t commit ad dollars to the upfront TV ad market this past spring, the magazine reported.
Viagra spent $31 million on NFL spots this past season, according to iSpot.tv.
“Pharma is a category that is always subject to patent cliffs,” Brian Wieser, an advertising industry analyst with Pivotal Research, told The Post. “Some brands go away, others emerge.”
But Wieser wondered if traditional NFL advertisers were moving away from their commitments to bring down their overall advertising costs.
Last week, AnheuserBusch’s US marketing boss, Marcel Marcondes, told the Wall Street Journal that with more people watching streaming sports, the “negotiations about the price [of traditional TV sports] should change as well.”
“Can you buy more at Viacom for $10 per CPM [cost per thousand]?” Wieser asked. “That is changing your mix and hurts football, but it’s too early to say. NFL was always seen as immune from declines and therefore worth the premium.”
There’s another downside to the disappearing ED spots.
Apparently viewers who liked the ads really liked the ads — as iSpot.tv research showed the ED commercials stop people from switching channels.
Viagra commercials are watched 75 percent of the way through., the data showed.
Some Cialis spots remain on the air — although the number has been cut back to fewer than 10 a day from 91.
The brand spent $105 million over the past year and has typically spent money on sports, hard news, crime and history shows, iSpot.tv said.
As for Viagra ads, 23 percent of all impressions came on CBS, 12.3 percent on Fox and 9.1 percent on ESPN — and were most visible during NFL games and on ESPN’s SportsCenter.
But don’t fret for the leagues or networks. Other pharma brands — namely Chantix, Opdivo, a cancer treatment, and Lyrica, a fibromyalgia treatment — may take up the slack, Ad Age reported.