Verizon spent more on ads last month than any other U.S. carrier totaling an estimated $55 Million just for ads and commercials in February alone. That number shouldn’t seem surprising given Verizon’s ranking as the number one U.S. carrier in terms of subscriber numbers, which help the carrier to rack up a sizable amount in annual revenue each year. The data, which comes from iSpot.tv and Fierce Wireless, also shows various other pieces of information about the wireless industry’s ad spending habits, including how much some of the other carriers spent on ads last month, as well as which ads for each carrier were the most expensive.
For Verizon, its most expensive ad cost it more than half of its total monthly spending amount, said to be totaled at about $32.5 Million for the ‘Departure’ ad. Though the iSpot.tv data doesn’t mention anything about why the ads are expensive as they are, for Verizon and ‘Departure’ a big contributing factor is likely that it included Thomas Middleditch, who most will commonly know from his role on HBO’s Silicon Valley. The remaining amount of money Verizon spent on ads last month was spread out across eleven more ads, all of which combined were ran almost 7,600 times over the course of the month.
Sprint was the next biggest spender with a total of $51.3 million for a total of 15 ads which ran almost 7,700 times, and its most expensive ad cost it $26 Million, which, is a fair amount less than what Verizon spent for a single ad but not by much, and $26 Million for one ad is still quite a hefty sum. T-Mobile spent nearly as much as Sprint, totaling $51.1 Million for ten ads with $12 Million being attributed to a single ad, though one interesting thing of note is that T-Mobile’s ads ran almost 8,800 times, which is a lot more than the number of times ads ran for Verizon and Sprint, and it spent less money than both carriers. Included in the measurement data in addition to these three top carriers were Boost Mobile and Metro PCS, both of which spent a total of $16.3 Million and $$23.3 Million on ads last month respectively. Noticeably absent however, is data about AT&T’s ad spending, though there is a category for other carriers which it is likely lumped into.