CBS: No Web Ad Recession for March Madness
by Peter Kafka
Posted on March 5, 2009 at 12:39 PM PT
Here’s a pleasant, rare bit of media news sunshine: CBS says advertisers are still lining up to get into its March Madness webcast. The company expects to generate $30 million in Web ads from the college tournament this year, up 30 percent from 2008.
CBS (CBS) says it has locked up AT&T (T) Coke (KO) and General Motors’ (GM) Pontiac as “presenting sponsors.” And Comcast (CMCSA) is paying to associate itself with the Webcast’s “boss button,” which you’re supposed to hit if one of your remaining superiors waddles by your cube while you’re watching the Duke game.
Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee thinks CBS will need to take some of that extra dough and plow it right back into bandwidth bills, since the company is using a high-end player from Microsoft (MSFT) to stream the games this year. I’m not so sure about that–last I looked, Microsoft was still trying to persuade companies to use its player instead of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, and I have to believe it’d be willing to make it worth CBS’s while to do so.
