The Measure

You wouldn’t expect to see Ben Johnson, the intense coach of the Chicago Bears, in a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie, holding hands with his wife Jessica while a student choir carols. Nor would you expect a stadium full of NFL fans to be tuning in to watch the romance movies Hallmark rolls out every football season. And yet, this season, Hallmark Channel will roll out its third NFL-team themed original movie. And the data says it’s a touchdown.

Every week, we turn to iSpot's agentic AI platform SAGE to explore what's working for TV advertisers today. The featured brand this time is GEICO and, of course, its famous Gecko. Fun fact: The Gecko was originally created due to a Screen Actors Guild strike in 1999 which prevented advertisers from using live human actors…something I personally didn’t know until now! Anyways, let's get to the data. The Measure: Tell me about GEICO’s three top ads by likeability so far in 2026.

Artificial intelligence has been widely adopted by the companies that make the ads real people will see. According to a State of Ad Ops study from XR, 88% of U.S. advertisers use AI in creative production and nearly half of the brand and agency executives surveyed said they use the technology daily. AI is most often used for production and postproduction.

The odds favor the Los Angeles Rams winning the Super Bowl as the NFL season starts tonight. Meanwhile, the league and the networks that televise its games are also expected to be big winners. Already the most powerful programming on TV, the NFL’s advertising revenues are expected to increase by 8% to $6.3 billion this season, according to Guideline, which tracks ad spending. The season will culminate with the first Super Bowl to appear on the Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN.

It's everyone's favorite time of year: "There are too many sports betting ads on TV!" month. True or not (they're far less prevalent than many other major industries), this year's crop of new sportsbook ads will also include prediction market Kalshi. Along with not being a sportsbook in the traditional sense, the brand has also made a splash by – successfully – not following the typical sportsbook TV ad playbook.

The NFL is not just open for business from September through February, with fans craving content around the league and its teams every second of every day each year. Team content approaches have adjusted over time to mimic these viewer behaviors, using social video to interact directly with fans, bring them behind the scenes, and forge a more personal connection – whether that's during the season or the long offseason timeframe.

With the football season getting underway, we're reminded the television business has become all about delivering sports to viewers and advertisers. Sports has been so strong that it's tempting to just roll the ball out on the field and let the players handle it from there. But with billions of dollars at stake, the need for data about how sports fans behave is becoming more and more important. This week we have a few examples.

If you can’t go to the stadium to attend a game in person, the next best option might be to watch in a sports bar. According to research from DirecTV for Business, 31% of the sports fans it surveyed said going to the ballpark was their top choice for watching a game. The second choice was a tie between the comfort of a couch in the living room or man cave and a sports bar, with each getting 29%. With big screens, high-def pictures and free snacks, home is where most people watch their sports.

Even if you pony up to pay for the subscriptions that let you watch the sports you want to see on TV, many viewers say it’s hard to figure out which games are on which channels. The answer, according to Gracenote, could be adding a display of upcoming games to home scenes.

YouTube IS TV, and yet... advertisers still aren't buying like it is. Why not? It probably has something to do with live sports. Like cable channel and SVOD services before it, YouTube needs a regular stream of live sports to really drive ad dollars. But it's not as simple as just spending the money to acquire NFL, college or MLS rights. YouTube would need to change the way audiences consume sports content on the platform...