The Video Advertising Bureau today sent marketers a 27-page update of its "Welcome to TV" report, which counts 160 advertisers that bought national television for the first time between January 1 and June 30, 2026. Together they spent $355.6 million across 37 categories, according to VAB's analysis of Nielsen Ad Intel data. Nine artificial intelligence brands and nine pharmaceutical brands accounted for 43% of that money. More than half of the newcomers spent less than $300,000.

The report pairs that spending list with a second, separate body of evidence. Its headline claims about recall, attention and consumer action do not come from the 160 brands at all. They come from a 2026 study by Comcast Advertising, a seller of TV and streaming inventory, which tested 30-second ads on 891 people in lab and home settings. VAB's email, sent under the subject line "Adding TV to advertising campaigns enhances brand impact," leads with one figure from that study: "by adding Multiscreen TV alongside their social spend, brands see a 1.8x lift in unaided brand recall."

In Short

The VAB, a trade body that promotes TV advertising, counted 160 brands that bought national TV for the first time in the first half of 2026, spending $355.6 million between them. Most of the money came from a few big spenders, mainly AI companies and drug makers, while most of the brands themselves spent modest sums under $500,000. The report's claims that adding TV makes search, social and podcast ads more memorable come from a Comcast lab study that showed streaming TV ads to 891 people, not from measuring what happened to these 160 brands. The brand-level evidence in the report is a set of five Google search charts, which show search interest rising after TV launches but include no comparison group.

What VAB counted and how

According to the report's source notes, the spending figures are a VAB analysis of Nielsen Ad Intel data pulled on August 13, 2026, covering January 1 to June 30, 2026. "TV spend" is defined as national cable TV, broadcast TV, Spanish-language cable TV, Spanish-language broadcast TV and streaming TV - the bundle VAB calls multiscreen TV. Only brands with national TV spending above $50,000 are included. Local and spot TV purchases are outside the scope, as is any brand below the threshold.

The report does not state how far back VAB looked to decide that a brand was new to national TV. That matters, because the list mixes start-ups with sub-brands of large, long-established advertisers. Mr. Pibb, a Coca-Cola soft drink, appears with $970,200. So do Reveal by Kohler ($5.07 million), Storyliving by Disney ($156,900), VCX by Fundrise ($3.90 million) and Exdensur, a GSK asthma drug ($3.49 million). The unit of analysis is the brand as Nielsen records it, not the company that pays for it.

Nielsen Ad Intel spending is itself an estimate. One example in the report shows the gap that can open between an estimate and a company's own statement. Spot & Tango, a dog food company, appears on VAB's list with $4.29 million of national TV spending in the first half. A trade press headline that VAB reproduces on page 10, dated April 27, 2026, says the company was "investing $3.5 million in TV and out-of-home advertising as part of a multi-pronged 2026 campaign." The report does not reconcile the two numbers.

The full report is gated. Most pages carry the line "This information is exclusively provided to VAB members and qualified marketers," and the email directs readers to create an account. The report was prepared by Jason Wiese, executive vice president and director of strategic insights, Karolina Guillen, associate director of insights, strategy and analytics, and Amanda Cashman, insights analyst. An earlier edition, "Welcome to TV: Full Year '25," is listed among related VAB content at the end of the document.

Where the $355.6 million went

VAB ranks the top 15 categories by spend. The table below reproduces them.

Rank Category Brands Spend Share of spend
1 AI 9 $76.97 million 22%
2 Pharmaceutical 9 $75.36 million 21%
3 Health & Wellness 16 $43.05 million 12%
4 Organizations 15 $32.01 million 9%
5 Internet Services 1 $29.69 million 8%
6 Food Delivery 1 $20.38 million 6%
7 Auto 8 $13.99 million 4%
8 Financial Services 21 $13.98 million 4%
9 Pet Care 4 $7.96 million 2%
10 Home Improvement 4 $5.89 million 2%
11 Personal Care 5 $5.11 million 1%
12 Alcoholic Beverages 4 $3.99 million 1%
13 Kitchen & Bath 3 $3.98 million 1%
14 Electronics 3 $3.67 million 1%
15 Apparel & Accessories 10 $3.45 million 1%
- Other categories (22) 47 $16.12 million 5%

AI brands

VAB titles the category page "There has been an influx of AI advertisers on TV as competition grows and use cases increase across both consumers and businesses." The spending, though, sits with very few names. Genspark, an AI productivity platform founded in 2023, spent $35.91 million. Base44, an AI app builder founded in 2024 and acquired by Wix in June 2025, spent $21.58 million. Those two alone account for about three quarters of the AI category's $76.97 million, by PPC Land's calculation. AI.com, listed separately at $17.82 million, would take the share higher still if it sits in the same category, which the report does not specify.

Both Genspark and Base44 entered national TV through the Super Bowl on February 8, 2026. That broadcast drew other AI spending too: Anthropic bought two Super Bowl spots to say Claude would stay ad-free, a campaign that does not appear on VAB's list of new advertisers.

Pharmaceutical and health

The single largest new advertiser was Yeztugo Rx, at $36.00 million, about 10% of all first-time spending. Other prescription brands on the list include Kisunla Rx ($10.82 million), Rhapsido Rx ($6.73 million), Amvuttra Rx ($4.15 million), Nereus Rx ($3.65 million) and Exdensur Rx ($3.49 million). Foundayo, with $8.42 million, also appears among the 15 brands that spent more than $5 million.

These launches arrived in a category where TV has been losing share. VAB's own pharma guide, covered by PPC Land on November 4, showed pharma TV ad spend falling 4% to $6.9 billion in 2025 while digital rose 21% to $18.7 billion. In May, a different VAB cut of the same Nielsen source had shown prescription TV spending up 53% in the six months after the FDA began its crackdown on drug promotion.

Health & Wellness held the most brands of any category after financial services, with 16. Two cancer blood-screening tests sit near the top of the overall list: Shield by Guardant at $15.55 million and Cancerguard at $14.41 million. VAB describes Cancerguard as an early detection test founded in 2025.

One-brand categories

Two categories consist of a single advertiser each. Starlink, the satellite internet service, is the only brand in Internet Services and spent $29.69 million. ezCater is the only brand in Food Delivery, at $20.38 million. Together those two companies spent more than the 78 brands in financial services, apparel and the 22 smallest categories combined.

Many brands, small budgets

Financial services supplied 21 brands, the most of any category, but only $13.98 million, or 4% of spending. The 22 categories outside the top 15 contributed 47 brands and $16.12 million. The report does not say which brands make up Organizations, a category with 15 brands and $32.01 million. The appendix includes foundations and campaign-style names such as Make America Healthy Again at $17.82 million, Invest America at $9.27 million and the Tim Tebow Foundation at $1.43 million, without showing the category each was assigned to.

One detail in the appendix stands out. Make America Healthy Again and AI.com both carry exactly the same figure, $17,817.9 thousand. The report offers no comment on the match, and it cannot be determined from the document whether it is a coincidence or a data error.

A few big bets and a long tail

VAB frames the spread of budgets as a strength. "With 72% of new advertisers investing less than $1MM, and 61% investing less than $500K, multiscreen TV delivers across a range of investment levels, giving brands flexibility to align campaigns with their budgets, audiences and marketing objectives," the report's key takeaways state.

The underlying distribution, which PPC Land checked against the full 160-brand appendix, is lopsided:

  • 39 brands (24%) spent under $100,000
  • 59 brands (37%) spent $100,000 to $500,000
  • 17 brands (11%) spent $500,000 to $1 million
  • 30 brands (19%) spent $1 million to $5 million
  • 15 brands (9%) spent more than $5 million

Those 15 largest spenders put in $259.2 million, about 73% of the total, by PPC Land's calculation. The top five - Yeztugo Rx, Genspark, Starlink, Base44 and ezCater - account for $143.6 million, or 40%. The median brand on the list spent about $263,000. The appendix entries add up to $355.61 million, within $1,000 of the grand total in VAB's category table.

VAB describes the range as running from "'test and learn' campaigns, launches from SMBs and 'big bets' made by brands in highly competitive categories." So is first-time national TV a small-budget channel or a big-budget one? Counted by dollars, the report is mostly a story about the big bets. Counted by brands, it is mostly a story about small tests.

February carried 42% of the half

The monthly chart shows how much of the activity was tied to one broadcast. New advertisers spent $5.5 million in January, $150.2 million in February and $42.9 million in March, for a first-quarter total of $198.6 million (56%). The second quarter added $36.2 million in April, $44.1 million in May and $76.8 million in June, for $157.0 million (44%).

February alone held 42% of first-half spending. VAB's caption attributes the peak to "brands across categories investing in major sporting events during February." Super Bowl LX aired on February 8 on NBC, and Nielsen counted 128.2 million viewers for its halftime show. Page 10 of the report collects trade press headlines on the debuts: Tree Hut's creator-led Super Bowl campaign (February 2), Base44's first Super Bowl ad (January 28) and Genspark's AI-assisted spot (February 8). Celebrity tie-ins appear too, including Mr. Pibb's March Madness campaign with Scottie Pippen (March 20) and Park Place Technologies' commercial with tennis player Genie Bouchard (April 28).

The same page includes a July 14, 2026 headline about Cowboy Colostrum, a supplement brand. That date falls outside the January to June window, and the brand does not appear in the 160-name appendix. Page 11 shows social media posts in which first-time advertisers celebrated their launches, gathered from Instagram, X and LinkedIn as of October 21, 2026.

The direct-to-consumer segment

VAB separates out 28 direct-to-consumer brands across 14 categories. Their combined spending was $27.4 million, according to PPC Land's sum of VAB's DTC table; VAB states "over $27 million." That is 18% of the new advertisers and 8% of the money, figures that match VAB's own callout on the page.

Spot & Tango led the group at $4.29 million, followed by Fellow, a kitchen brand ($3.39 million), Majority, a financial services brand ($2.21 million), Hone Health ($2.11 million) and Rapid Radios ($1.96 million). At the other end, Peluva, Nuuly and Teal Health each spent between $51,900 and $54,300, just over the $50,000 inclusion threshold. Apparel and accessories supplied six of the 28 DTC names, more than any other category.

DTC brands have been a steady theme in VAB's messaging this year. In October, VAB promoted a Tatari survey in which 54% of 41 digital-native and DTC clients planned to be on air with holiday TV before mid-November.

The search charts

The section of the report that deals with the 160 brands' own outcomes uses one source: Google Trends. VAB charts weekly US search interest for five brands, starting six months before each TV launch. The report explains the scale directly: a value of 100 "is the peak popularity for the term, a value of 50 means that the term is half as popular." The index measures interest relative to the highest point in the chosen window, not search volume.

The five cases:

  • Genspark (AI): the index rose from 7 in the week before the Super Bowl to 100 in the week of February 8, which VAB reports as "over 14x." TV launch: February 8, 2026.
  • Base44 (AI): from 48 to 100 over the same two weeks, or 2.1 times. TV launch: February 8, 2026.
  • Cancerguard (Health & Wellness): from 10 in the week before launch to 55 in launch week, 69 the week of February 8 and 100 the week of February 15. VAB labels this a 10x increase. TV launch: February 2, 2026.
  • Discount Lots (Real Estate), an online real estate marketplace founded in 2019: from 0 the week before launch to 70 in launch week and 100 the week of March 22. VAB's "+43%" compares the second week with the first. TV launch: March 16, 2026.
  • Amino Alliance (Vitamins & Supplements), launched in 2009: from 0 to 83 in launch week and 100 the week of February 22. VAB's "+21%" again compares two weeks after launch. TV launch: February 18, 2026.

Two of the five start from an index of zero, which on Google's scale means too little search interest to register. That is why VAB reports their gains against the launch week rather than the week before. The multiples are also sensitive to the starting point. Genspark's 14x rests on a pre-launch reading of 7, and because the index is rounded to whole numbers, a reading of 6 or 8 would have produced a multiple of about 17 or 12.5. None of the charts includes a control group or isolates the TV buy from other activity. The Super Bowl debuts, for instance, came with press coverage and social posts that VAB itself reproduces on pages 10 and 11.

There are smaller inconsistencies in the date ranges. Genspark's chart heading gives weeks of August 3, 2025 to February 8, 2026, while its source line says August 3, 2025 to February 15, 2026. Base44's heading and source line give different start and end dates as well.

The report quotes both AI marketers, citing other outlets. "Our challenge was that people look at AI and feel psychologically distant ... a tool that you might be afraid of, we want it to be very accessible to everyone," Jennifer Lin, marketing lead at Genspark, told Ad Age on February 8, according to the report. "We want people to conceive of us as an AI [platform] for work that's very easy for everyone to use. That's why we want to be in the Super Bowl, but come out unlike a very techie company." Shay Korin, Base44's vice president of marketing, was quoted from a Wix Newsroom post on January 28: "The pace of growth at Base44 over the past year has been extraordinary, and appearing during the Big Game is a marker of that momentum."

VAB has used the same method before. In August, its World Cup report showed Casamigos' Google search index doubling from 50 to 100 alongside $19.5 million of TV spend, also without a control group. Google Trends readings also move depending on where they are pulled from: in October, an ExpressVPN test found that Trends scores differed by IP address in 60% of weekly checks.

Search platforms now offer more direct measures of the same effect. Google said in June that each additional branded search after an ad view correlated with an average $31 sales gain, and in October Google Ads API v26 added 15 Search Lift metrics designed to measure ad-driven searches. A Lifesight report in August put the lift in paid search conversions from pairing CTV with search at 22.3%, though it disclosed no sample or method.

The recall numbers come from Comcast

Pages 4 to 7 of the VAB report, the ones that carry its argument that TV strengthens search, social and podcast advertising, all cite a single source: "Comcast Advertising, TV Makes Memories, 2026." VAB's slides give no method. The method is in Comcast's own report.

According to Comcast Advertising, the study was conducted by the research firm MediaScience in 2025 with 891 participants across in-lab and in-home settings. Participants saw 30-second ads. The researchers tracked eye movement, cardiac deceleration as a marker of cognitive attention and neurometric intensity as a marker of emotional response, then ran a post-exposure survey. Comcast's report says TV is "inclusive of traditional and streaming," but the test environment for TV was streaming: a 30-minute program in an unbranded streaming interface. Social media was tested in Instagram and YouTube feeds, with a separate group for YouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels. Audio was a podcast. Search was tested in two forms, a traditional results list and an AI-generated summary. Comcast's report does not give per-group sample sizes or the delay between exposure and the recall question.

The figures VAB reproduces match the Comcast report:

  • Attention: compared with a mobile ad, 26% more viewers looked at the brand message in the TV ad, 36% more time was spent viewing it, and focused attention was 6% higher. In Comcast's report, the 6% figure describes a mobile ad shown after a TV ad. VAB places it under the heading "When viewers are exposed to a TV ad compared to a mobile ad."
  • Recall by channel: TV exposure produced 12.4 times higher recall than search exposures, 2.2 times higher than social media exposures and 2.1 times higher than audio streaming exposures.
  • Paired exposures: unaided recall was 40% after one search ad plus one TV ad, against 5% after two search ads (8.7 times). It was 42% for a social ad plus a TV ad, against 24% for two social ads (1.8 times), and 44% for an audio ad plus a TV ad, against 27% for two audio ads (1.6 times).
  • Stated actions: participants were 119% more likely to say they would discuss the brand when a TV exposure was added to a search ad, 110% more likely to say they would visit the website when TV was added to a social ad, and 207% more likely to say they would look for more information when TV was added to a podcast ad.

Unaided recall is a form of ad recall in which participants name brands without being prompted. The study measured exposures in a controlled setting, not money spent or campaigns run. VAB's email phrasing - brands "see a 1.8x lift in unaided brand recall" by "adding Multiscreen TV alongside their social spend" - turns a comparison of two ads seen by study participants into a statement about advertisers' budgets. The study did not measure any of the 160 brands. Nor did it include a linear TV condition, even though most of the spending in VAB's dataset spans cable and broadcast as well as streaming.

Comcast's report also includes a finding that VAB leaves out. Brand recall from AI-generated search summaries was 23% lower than from a traditional search results list, according to Comcast Advertising. The finding is relevant to the 12.4x and 8.7x search comparisons, since it means the result depends on what kind of search page the participant saw.

Similar numbers have appeared in other Comcast-family material this autumn. FreeWheel, which belongs to Comcast, published a MediaScience study in September with 436 participants that showed the same 42% against 24% split for a streaming ad paired with a social ad, and found that heavier ad loads cut streaming recall from 41% to 26%. Comcast's October Multiscreen Performance Report cited 36% more viewing time and 2.2 times the recall of social. Neither document explains how the 436-person and 891-person samples relate.

Why this matters for marketers

VAB's narrative is aimed squarely at brands that grew up on search and social. "Many brands start their advertising journey with search and social media to manufacture discoverability and build an initial customer base, but as they look for more growth, they must add platforms that provide new audiences and greater engagement," the report states on its second page. It argues that TV "strengthens other channels - like search, social and podcasts - and amplifies the entire media mix," which is a description of a halo effect.

The newcomer list is small against the size of the TV market. A VAB analysis covered in September counted 86,800 brand advertisers on national and local broadcast TV in 2025. The two counts use different scopes, so they cannot be compared directly, but 160 national debuts in six months is a modest flow into that pool. For brands that buy search and social, the median may be the more relevant figure: about $263,000 for half a year of national TV, far below the Super Bowl-scale budgets that dominate the totals. Sellers have been building entry routes for that kind of advertiser. Universal Ads launched a $5 million incrementality fund for e-commerce merchants in May 2025, and in Germany ProSiebenSat.1 opened self-service TV ads to smaller firms in October.

The report's limits follow a pattern PPC Land has documented in other VAB material. VAB represents TV networks and exists to market TV advertising. In August, it headlined a 94% ad completion rate drawn from 2023 FreeWheel data. Its Impression Gap study with TVision, published in February, compared premium streaming services with YouTube on co-viewing and attention. In October, its More Illusions of the Internet supplement assembled third-party statistics about digital fraud and AI-generated content, several of which did not reconcile with their sources. In July, it expanded its directory of outside measurement firms for TV advertisers to 20 vendors.

In this report, the spending data is specific and checkable. The brand-level outcomes rest on five search-interest charts. The causal claims rest on a lab study by a company that sells TV advertising, run on streaming TV only, which the 160 brands did not take part in. What the document does not show is whether any of the newcomers came back for a second flight, how their search or sales results compared with brands that stayed off TV, or what the half-year's $355.6 million bought in reach.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), the TV industry's US marketing body, with spending data from Nielsen Ad Intel and recall data from a Comcast Advertising study conducted by MediaScience. The 160 brands include Yeztugo Rx, Genspark, Starlink, Base44, ezCater, Waymo, Spot & Tango and Mr. Pibb.

What: VAB's "Welcome to TV" 1H 2026 update counts 160 brands across 37 categories that spent $355.6 million on national multiscreen TV for the first time. AI (22%) and pharmaceutical (21%) brands took 43% of the money, the 15 largest spenders about 73%, and 61% of brands spent $500,000 or less. Recall claims, including 8.7 times higher recall when a TV ad is added to a search ad, come from a 2025 lab and in-home study of 891 people that tested streaming TV only.

When: VAB emailed the report today, November 9, 2026. The spending covers January 1 to June 30, 2026, using Nielsen data pulled on August 13, 2026. February, the Super Bowl month, accounted for $150.2 million.

Where: National US television, including cable, broadcast, Spanish-language networks and streaming. The search case studies use US Google Trends data.

Why: VAB argues that brands built on search and social should add TV to strengthen those channels. The report gives specific spending data but measures the 160 brands' results only through five Google Trends charts without control groups, while its causal claims rely on a study by a company that sells TV advertising.