Go90 is 'Most Valuable' Ad During Last Week's NBA Broadcasts

With the National Basketball Association more popular than ever, advertisers are shelling out for increased audience numbers over the past few years. Each week, we'll be looking at the top ads during NBA games, and how brand strategies continue to evolve over the course of the season.February 8-14, 2017Advertisers spent over (an estimated) $38 million during NBA games from February 8-14, keeping relatively flat with the preceding week's spend. The list of top ads did shuffle, however. Heineken's "Hypnotize," featuring Neil Patrick Harris, gave way to Verizon Go90's "Most Valuable Partner: Strike a Deal" spot in terms of overall audience impressions, as calculated by iSpot.tv.

Verizon owned two of the top four spots this past week, for a total of nearly 34 million TV ad impressions. "Most Valuable Partner," iGo90's new "Shark Tank"-type streaming show, took home about 19 million on its own, and Verizon's "All the Data You Want" grabbed another 15 million viewers.The heavy spend on NBA games makes a lot of sense for Verizon, especially for Go90. The mobile streaming service offers NBA League Pass exclusively for Verizon customers. Showing NBA viewers what else Go90 has to offer has the potential to encourage more subscriptions and cross-viewership over time.Other top spots during the seven-day period, in terms of impressions, included Apple’s “Take Mine” for the iPhone 7 Plus, Burger King’s “Hot Relationship” and FitBit’s “Every Beat.”