March Madness is well underway, and while sales and stock prices soar for businesses like Buffalo Wild Wings, Domino's Pizza, and other companies traditionally associated with the NCAA tournament, not all advertisers can pay the high price tag for the exposure garnered from $1.5 million for a 30 second ad spot during the title game. While the likelihood of scoring a perfect bracket is 1 in 9.2 quintillion (that's a 9 with 18 zeros behind it), consumers are spending $12 billion on NCAA tournament betting alone. What this means for savvy ecommerce companies? You've got a captive audience of invested …

Should we advertise as part of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament? That's the question I recently heard that got me thinking. Why would a company be one of the 80+ that officially participate in this year's March Madness? A multi-faceted decision, the answer really is "it depends." From company to company, marketing strategy ultimately guides such a decision. But that didn't feel good enough to me, so although I'm not a media buying insider, I thought it would be interesting to investigate how to value a March Madness commitment.

It seems that each week of this year we see and hear news about the colliding and fast-evolving spaces within the entertainment world. This week was no different. And while much of entertainment and tech news this week focused on the dbutante ball for the Apple Watch, for those listening to the other news from the Apple event, there was a significant product update for Apple TV.

Millennial behaviors are shifting. In fact, Millennials themselves are shifting. While Millennials check their smartphone 45 times per day, 35% of Millennials now have their own kids to contend with. What's clear, though, is for a segment that's 25% of the U.S. population and worth $200 billion in spending, "classic" home pages and guides factor less and less in their decision making. In fact, when compared to search discovery, Millennials are 56% more likely to use native discovery through a widening array of social media.

As I know from experience, entertainment properties aimed at children can present marketing and PR people with challenges - if kids don't consume media the way adults do, how do you get your message in front of them? One answer is to go where the kids are: school.