Nintendo spent over $14m on TV ads in March No other gaming brand cracked $1 million in TV ad spend last month

Rebekah Valentine Senior Staff Writer Monday 13th April 2020 Share this article Share

Nintendo spent big on TV ads last month, especially to promote Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and it looks like no other gaming brand came close to touching a similar total spend.

According to data shared by VentureBeat and iSpot.tv, Nintendo spent an estimated $14.6 million on TV ads last month, $5.3 million more than it spent in February.

That money went toward 20 different ads that aired over 3,000 times, with an Animal Crossing: New Horizons trailer seeing the largest budget for a single ad.

Nintendo was the only gaming company to spend over $1 million on TV ads, with the second-biggest spend coming from Bethesda at an estimated $866,000 split between two ad spots. $499,000 of that went toward the Doom: Eternal official launch trailer.

Xbox spent the third most, with $641,000 across four ads and its biggest spend -- $269,000 -- on a Doom: Eternal ad in partnership with Bethesda.

GameFly was fourth, with $439,000, and Activision spent $221,000 on a single ad for Call of Duty: Warzone which ran 80 times from March 17 to March 22, only on ESPN and ESPN2.

In total, the games industry spent an estimated $17.3 million on TV ads in March, up $5.3 million from February.