Hasta La Creative!

ESPN’s out-of-home audience continues to give the network a not-insignificant ratings boost, as viewing in bars, restaurants, gyms, hotels and other public venues over the last several months have added millions of heretofore unaccounted-for deliveries.

While the out-of-home gains look to help recapture some of the industry-wide declines in traditional couch-lock TV ratings, moreover, they may also prove to make up for a good deal of the losses of younger viewers that are increasingly difficult to reach. According to Nielsen, OOH viewing has provide to bolster ESPN’s adults 18-to-24 audience by 9% and ESPN2’s by 7%, while 31% of all deliveries of adults 18-to-34 across both networks can be traced back to viewers who have slipped the bounds of their sofas.

According to Nielsen, ESPN last year notched its biggest out-of-home lift on Jan. 1, when its coverage of the Rose Bowl matchup between Stanford and Iowa drew an additional 1.15 million viewers who watched the game outside the friendly confines of their own dens and living rooms. The OOH deliveries marked a 9% lift compared to the broadcast’s standard C3 rating, bringing the game’s total audience to nearly 15 million viewers.

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