Shark Week Takes Bigger Bite of TV Ad Impressions

Shark Week, Discovery's annual summer shindig celebrating all things jaws, chomped off a bigger slice of household TV ad impressions this year compared to Shark Week 2022, according to data from iSpot.tv.

For July 23-29, 2023, Discovery generated 662.7 million primetime TV ad impressions, an 11% increase from the primetime impressions generated during 2022’s Shark Week. Ad airings were up 9% year-over-year as well. Across all networks, Discovery had a primetime impressions share of voice of 2.30% for the week, making it the No. 11 network for primetime SOV. By comparison, the network had a 2.10% impressions SOV for Shark Week 2022 (also ranking No. 11).

The deep sea dive is clearly a draw for Discovery: For the 2023 Sun-Sat period before Shark Week, Discovery ranked No. 15 for primetime network SOV (1.72%), per iSpot.

Top brands advertising during Shark Week programming (ranked by impressions SOV) included Domino's, L'OR Barista, ProNamel, Force Factor and Infiniti. Notably, of these five only Domino's advertised during Shark Week 2022.

Inscape data reveals that there were more minutes watched overall on Discovery during Shark Week than a regular week: It had a 1.75% viewership share for July 23-29, 2023, putting it at No. 10 in the network ranking for watch-time. By comparison, for the previous Sun-Sat period (July 16-22), Discovery had a 1.08% viewership share (No. 23).

Discovery’s most-watched Shark Week program was Belly of the Beast: Feeding Frenzy — the first of its 2023 offerings — which captured nearly 4% of all minutes watched on Discovery during Shark Week, per Inscape.