Notice more TV ads lately? You’re not imagining it.
The amount of commercial time on cable TV keeps increasing as networks try to make up for shrinking audiences by stuffing more ads into every hour of television.
That’s despite years of promises to cut back on ads.
Last quarter, commercial time rose 1%, according to Michael Nathanson, an analyst at MoffettNathanson LLC. After declining in 2017, the volume of ads increased every quarter last year and expanded again in the first half of 2019, he said.
Fox was the only major cable network group to lower its ads last quarter, cutting them by 2%, Nathanson said.