FIFA+ provides sports biopics and documentaries as well as match action and has been expanding globally across connected TV apps and FAST channels. Romy Gai, FIFA’s Chief Business Officer, said: “Sky Media’s expertise and leading capabilities in advertising sales will maximise the commercial success of FIFA+ content, enabling us to create new commercial opportunities.”

Brett Aumuller, Managing Director of Sky Media added: “It’s great to be collaborating with FIFA as they move into the connected TV and FAST channels space. We already provide a wide-ranging football offering to advertisers, and adding FIFA+ will make it an even simpler and more compelling proposition for brands.”

FIFA+ has been well received by consumers in its first year. During the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, FIFA+ generated 190 million views on match recaps.

Editor’s comment:

Advertisers welcome premium streaming services as a way to reach audiences, but also value simplicity when it comes to planning and buying audiences. This deal is a classic example of how an established sales house gives them a direct route into a new audience opportunity. There are many entities ready to represent streamers selling ads. Existing broadcast/Pay TV groups are well-placed to perform that role, as Sky Media has demonstrated here.

Upwave is trying to bring a Google Analytics feel to brand metrics measurement – less like post-campaign research consultancy and more like hands-on, inflight daily insights into brand awareness and sentiment using a software solution that can also support top of funnel optimisation. “If we do our job, we make brand campaigns feel like performance campaigns, which you can constantly look at and optimise every hour in some channels. Brand was missing that,” says Kelly.

The next step in this ‘brand-treated-like-performance’ approach is the use of programmatic to optimise brand campaigns. Upwave has generated a persuadability score that can be applied to a brand and its favoured KPIs at a household level. Currently in laboratory testing with partners, this gives a household a score between zero and one based on how likely it is that consumers can be persuaded by a brand or a message. The score spins out of data analysis and modelling that is underpinned by a combination of deterministic exposure data (including ACR or set-top box data) and consumer opinion survey data.

The programmatic buying will be optimised against the persuadability score (with Upwave feeding the data to the DSP – the company does not buy or sell media itself). “Based on how persuadable a household is, a decision can be made on what to bid [to win an ad spot].” Upwave’s ambition is that programmatic buys can be optimised for brand outcomes as well as for conversion.

Upwave has industrialised consumer surveys to generate the data that helps it understand brand impact and persuadability, and this includes full automation. Kelly says the company surveys millions of consumers every year. “We don’t maintain a panel; there is no single group of consumers. For every campaign we find a large representative sample of consumers to get their opinions,” he explains. For any campaign, tens of thousands of people are surveyed, including both exposed and non-exposed homes.

Upwave does not try to link brand-level outcomes to actual business outcomes, leaving others to fuse these data sets if they want to. But the brand-level outcomes can be used as a predictor, by showing propensity to become a customer, Kelly claims. When Upwave conducted some tests to gauge the accuracy of its uplift-to-customer assumptions, using grocery sales data, the connection was very accurate, he notes. “We believe we can be used to forecast sales, though we are not tracking sales ourselves. Our early tracking with sales data has been very accurate.”

Kelly says the TV industry is spending a lot of time worrying about audience measurement and currency but needs to put as much effort into demonstrating outcomes – and that includes top of funnel outcomes, where his company specialises. “If a CMO wants to protect their TV budget, what do they want to show: currency statistics proving that they got what they paid for [they reached their target audience] and they were not ripped off, or metrics showing their top of funnel outcomes and that it was effective advertising?” he asks.

Returning to his American Football analogy, Kelly explains: “When a player scores in the end zone, that is a sales conversion. But what about all the plays that get you down the field into the end zone? We measure the movement down the field.” He points to the potentially huge impact of brand advertising, which at its best generates demand and increases lifetime value of customers you do secure, which pays back over years (like when people churn from other brands but stick with yours).

The long-term impact of brand advertising may be understood but when the CFO knocks on the door, CMOs may need some answers today. “Within a short timeframe, we can accurately forecast that you are generating the basis for customer lifetime value,” Kelly claims.

Many of today’s marketers and advertisers are crying out to be able to plan TV campaigns in the same way, with all the benefits programmatic brings to digital campaigns. And to be able to link TV with other channels to create true multi-channel campaign experiences.

Defragmenting fragmentation

The problem is that the media ecosystem is still highly fragmented, and this serves to make it difficult for advertisers to plan and activate campaigns across multiple channels in this way. The fundamentals are so different it seems hard to picture an ecosystem where TV and digital could sit comfortably in the same process. Not even the metrics used appear comparable: TV advertising is about GRPs (Gross Rating Points), TRPs (Target Rating Points) and reach, while programmatic evaluates impressions, viewability and unique users.

The standards can also differ widely between countries. While many continue to bill using GRP, major Spanish media group Atresmedia recently began invoicing linear TV and BVOD advertising at CPM instead of cost per GRP. Although this could potentially be the standard adopted globally by media groups in the long term, it adds more fragmentation to the media ecosystem in the short-term. This lack of standardisation has helped to create an environment where TV is surrounded by high walls that have made it almost impossible for marketers and advertisers to easily link it with other channels.

The arrival of Connected TV (CTV) has started to make bridging this divide achievable. As things stand, most of the available CTV inventory is traded via programmatic deals or direct buys, as publishers look to retain the maximum control over their premium inventory. However, it’s widely expected that the market will start to gradually open up as accepted standards are established in CTV. It’s also expected that this will eventually facilitate the transformation of programmatic into a true omnichannel offering.

Improving the impact of advertising

A recent survey examining UK consumer attitudes to CTV found that its adoption has continued its explosive growth since the early days of the pandemic, which drove rapid adoption through 2020; so much so that today 94% of British adults are reachable by CTV. Furthermore, CTV is continuing to steadily eat away at linear TV, with 13% of people watching less linear TV compared to 12 months ago. On top of this, users are eager for a more user-friendly ad experience, with 78% of users preferring ads relevant to their interests and 71% preferring ads relevant to the content they are watching.

Bringing programmatic into the TV arena and enabling marketers to apply the same techniques across the board is a massive win for all those involved in the digital advertising ecosystem. Not only does it enable greater reach, it also opens up new target groups and brings the promise of greater advertising impact as brands start to benefit from increased relevance. it’s no surprise that advertisers are looking to get in on the action. This explains why the combination of TV and programmatic is expected to increase the number of advertisers using the format, and thus, the advertising spend in the sector.

Meeting new measurability standards

While it’s true that programmatic has some measurability standards that could prove difficult to transfer to TV advertising due to the fragmentation of the advertising landscape – this doesn’t mean that making them comparable is by any means impossible. If we look at things from a high level, a digital TV commercial is not really any different to an online video ad unit in a web browser. This means that in theory RTB, VAST measurement standards, and the OM Web Video SDK can all be applied to TV spots played on a smart device in exactly the same way they are for online video. Similarly, there are also opportunities to apply the IAB’s Transparency and Consent Framework and to tackle ad fraud. Once header bidding and the use of IDs on CTV become a reality, this lays the foundation for programmatic advertising, which in turn places true cross-channel frequency capping and integrated brand and performance campaigns comfortably within reach for marketers and advertisers.

Making TV omnichannel

The development and linking of other channels in the past gives us a clear historical indication of the evolutionary timeline for how we would expect CTV to develop over the next few years. We expect to see CTV turning TV into an integrated channel in the omnichannel digital media landscape in the very near future. This is a huge opportunity for advertisers, and one they need to get to grips with now, because as these previously siloed channels merge it will give both advertisers and users a much more desirable advertising experience. That is a powerful proposition as brands look to find new ways to reach and engage with their audiences.

However, with the shift to TV streaming, advertisers now have an opportunity to reach and engage with consumers on the most powerful medium like never before. TV streaming offers consumers a wide variety of quality content to choose from, often at a lower cost than linear Pay TV. Findings from Roku’s 2021 Streaming Decade report shows that 90% of UK consumers now class themselves as streamers, and 2 in 3 are willing to pay for an ad-supported service at a lower cost than a monthly subscription, with free services that are completely ad-supported offering even more choice.

Optimising for the user helps the advertiser too

Although subscription models are popular, consumers are also open to advertising on TV streaming in exchange for quality content and lower costs. By having an innovative content and advertising experience, platforms and streaming services can drive engagement with consumers to a level only possible by having direct relationships with viewers. This in turn enables those providers to offer richer audience data and large, relevant audiences – making them a compelling investment source for advertisers seeking to reach new viewers and re-engage with those they once targeted on linear. That investment creates a flywheel effect, allowing ad-supported streaming services to continuously level up the experience and adding more entertainment, attracting more viewers and more advertising opportunities. However, while the theory is sound, how can this flywheel effect deliver positive advertising returns?

Identifying the advertising opportunities

On TV streaming there are many subscription VOD services that don’t currently feature advertising. However, advertising supported business models are increasingly taking a greater hold of the market. For advertisers, it represents an opportunity to diversify their inventory and to reach audiences who’ve shifted away from linear.

And it’s not a trend solely focused on millennials or Gen Z; streaming has become popular across all age groups. Our report shows that 94% of 18 – 40-year-olds are active streamers, whilst 84% of those aged 41 – 70 are regular streamers too. This change in behaviour means advertisers cannot think of streaming as simply an optional extra, it needs to be part of a fully integrated investment strategy targeting a range of demographics.

TV streaming can also be a powerful mechanism for brands new to TV advertising. Targeted campaigns on traditional linear TV in the UK is limited only to regional geographies, which still requires a large investment and typically leads to waste. In contrast, by relying on data and an understanding of the audiences likely to watch content on streaming services, advertisers on these services can be much more tailored in the audiences they target. In doing so, enabling the campaign efficacy and reach to be much higher and more likely to lead to better long- and short-term campaign metrics as a result.

When part of a unified platform, streaming also enables advertisers to gain one holistic view of consumers across services. This insight provides brands with the opportunity to reach viewers across streaming services, aligning with their interests through a much more targeted approach that further reduces wasted spend. In the future, such a setup could even translate into complete cross-media measurement mechanism that seamlessly blends all media into one metric.

Find the right partnerships

With the rapid growth of TV streaming, some are arguing we’re entering a new gold rush in the industry. The boom in TV streaming has created a very competitive market, with numerous streaming platforms and tech companies competing over content, customer experience and low costs. The challenge now for advertisers isn’t whether to invest in streaming services, it is which services and platforms they need to consider.

As more marketers and brands, particularly digital brands – those born from the digital era – discover the benefits of TV streaming advertising, the broader industry will start to benefit from the trickle down of those investments – with analysts, vendors, writers, producers, creatives and more in line to benefit from the boom of TV streaming advertising.

Making great TV content is expensive, and it’s crucial that the advertising industry recognises and understands the unique value that only TV entertainment delivers – and are prepared to make the investment to ensure it remains a premium inventory.

The future of TV

Streaming is the future of TV, and it represents a huge opportunity for advertisers, platforms, and services. For consumers, streaming means more choice and easier access to the premium entertainment they love. And, as consumers shift more of their entertainment time to streaming, incorporating ad-supported services into their viewing stack makes perfect sense. To deliver the best opportunities for all parties, TV streaming should continue to deliver the basics of great TV: premium content and a great user experience that makes it easy for consumers to access the entertainment of their choice.

Then, you hear all the reasons why this holy grail is so elusive. You hear the measurement isn’t quite there, or the technology is still far from where it needs to be… but due to viewer behaviour, there are necessary and effective applications that can enhance and complement’ business as usual’ TV campaigns.

Many brands and agencies are striving for elusive perfection in the execution of CTV advertising. They want to run campaigns through one demand side platform. They hope for some universal identification techniques or perfect data matching solution, but it’s just not realistic right now, or in any near future.

CTV is merely an Internet-enabled means by which to watch content, so the content itself doesn’t come from one all-seeing source. Broadcasters, new apps, YouTube, and more are all part of the addressable TV inventory pot that’s bubbling with opportunities for savvy marketers and modern media buyers.

Agile approach or bust

Embracing a more cross-platform approach to TV advertising is how the media industry unlocks the power of addressable TV. Media buyers must be agile to realise the full targeting and performance potential of TV – to be in front of a viewer at their convenience, around quality content and how they want to watch TV.

We need to employ a different approach to what is ultimately a new ‘TV any way consumers want it’ advertising medium. Respect the fact this is TV (ensuring the consideration of content is as above), and then, recognise it can be supercharged by the power of digital. You’ll find there are effective targeting methods that can be employed to pull this world together and make the most of the new capabilities right now.

I’m not advocating for marketers to cut off traditional TV or saying that the medium is the place where every single viewer can receive a perfectly customised and targeted ad every time they flip on the TV. However, brands and agencies striving for the aforementioned perfection must consider every TV endpoint. Before they fully utilise the burgeoning digital side of this medium, they must acknowledge that they are sometimes missing out on opportunities to talk to harder-to-target traditional TV unreachables, which actually still use the TV screen, but through streaming and Internet-based means.

There are highly scientific, strategic ways to employ addressable TV at scale that can make a major difference in a brands’ business today. We just need to get past this idea of what we think CTV should be able to do and examine where it already excels.

CTV may be complicated, but it is also unique

Alas, as many of us are experiencing, even as CTV is growing exponentially, it’s already become quite fragmented and complex. Media companies, TV manufacturers, streaming device makers, as well as legacy programmatic firms are all staking a claim – and many of these contenders have their own ad technology and unique data assets.

CTV is also fundamentally unique when compared to classic TV and digital media. Co-viewing is common, and accelerated through the pandemic. While some viewers are ‘logged in’ or identifiable when streaming their favourite shows, many are not, and others share accounts. Thus, one-to-one targeting is inherently challenging.

Which is why today, we have a range of third-party research firms and technology start-ups scrambling to find new ways of tracking these cross-platform viewing behaviours. Unsurprisingly, no one firm has got it completely figured out, but there are a number that are close and shedding all-important light on the opportunities that exist.

The audiences are there – and so are the tools

While measurement is often cited as a reason to delay moving forward with CTV, here’s one thing that all companies and researchers agree on – audiences are shifting. The numbers are undeniable. Ofcom data shows that only 32% of time spent with video content by 16–34-year-olds in 2021 came from broadcast TV. What’s more, this is down from 50% in 2017, so the momentum of travel has been quite dramatic.

The good news is there is scale in CTV that can help offset this decline in traditional content viewing, as long as marketers appreciate that viewers don’t actually care about the platforms by which they view. Addressable TV only realises its potential when we as an industry buy agnostically. Buyers must monitor the viewing behaviour everywhere, with all the tools at their disposal, and be willing to place ads on the TV screen in front of quality content at the viewers convenience.

Fragmented viewership should dictate buying strategies, not complex buying mechanisms, or a preferred choice of DSP. In almost all instances, being beholden to limited point solutions can become a limiting factor, severely constraining both audience and quality. This means finding ways to pull together broadcasters, new CTV suppliers and other tech platforms, like YouTube, as long as there is due diligence about content standards.

The marketers that move forward with a cross-platform strategy, utilising all the advanced tools at their disposal, will be far ahead of the curve as more targeting options emerge, and even more sophisticated creativity arrives. Developing these muscles and this expertise today will have a huge payoff.

Having this mindset is particularly important when targeting high net worth individuals. While a wide-ranging brand awareness campaign will have some value, the ROI for such a niche group will likely be low. Conversely, High Net Worth (HNW) individuals, like many others, don’t necessarily respond to hyper-targeting. A middle ground is needed to put the creative front and centre and focus on relevancy to the household, using data such as spend and postcodes to reduce wastage.

Get the creative right

Many of the most memorable ads have been led by a strong creative. It requires high production value and, for those targeting hard-to-reach audiences like HNW individuals, an aspirational call to action demonstrates how the product will enrich their lives. It can mean higher levels of investment, but for those targeting HNW individuals – who expect quality from their purchases given the prices they’re prepared to pay – it is vital that the creative matches expectations.

From a technological standpoint, that creative quality needs to be high on all media but particularly TV. When a poor-quality creative is served compared to the programming aligned with, it can negatively impact the user experience. It’s particularly important to get that right in a connected TV environment where content and ads are served over the internet. Watching a pixelated ad alongside a 4K-streamed show makes the brand look bad.

Think about location

Generally speaking, HNW audiences will be physically located in specific affluent areas where location-based data can be invaluable. Many will rightly assume that London has some of the wealthiest postcodes in the UK, but what about outside London? According to Zoopla, Virginia Water in Surrey takes that crown, meaning there’s value in targeting HNW groups outside the M25 too.

Brands cannot assume where their audience will be – they need to know. For example, suppose a luxury vehicle manufacturer wanted to target relevant audiences. In that case, an addressable TV campaign enables them to use high production value creative alongside household targeting that engages the viewer while also providing details on the nearest dealership. It makes for a much more compelling offering.

Address their interests

Relevance is one of the most important factors of a successful campaign, and it needs to be taken seriously, especially for hard-to-reach audiences like HNW individuals. But what makes an ad relevant? In partnership with research company DRG and professors from UCL, we sought to find out for our Thinking Inside the Box research programme. The study investigated whether audiences’ engagement with advertising is affected by addressability to the individual.

When addressed with relevant TV advertising, the findings showed that respondents liked addressable ads almost four times more than non-addressable. They also had more accurate memories, with 74% remembering images from the addressable ads vs 68% non-addressable.

At a physiological level, participants exhibited a greater focus on addressable ads, displayed a lower heart rate and greater external focus than non-addressable. It demonstrates that by being relevant to the viewer and addressing their interests, brands have a higher chance of engaging them, driving brand awareness and short-term sales as a result, particularly for those outlying audiences like HNW groups.

Like any other hard-to-reach or outlier audience, high net worth individuals will have specific interests and expectations. To fully engage them, advertisers need to consider the tools at their disposal that will address their interests and location without being invasive. It takes a nuanced approach, but through a combination of high-quality creative, effective targeting and placing relevance front and centre, you can create an advertising strategy that will deliver short-term sales goals and raise brand awareness with your target audience.

With a focus on the UK ad trade, Enders Analysis’ conducted desk research as well as interviews with 25 senior industry experts from across different stakeholder groups. At the Future of TV Advertising Global event, London, Gill Hind (COO at Enders Analysis) and Bob Carley (Head of Media and Diversity & Inclusion Lead at ISBA) discussed the contents of the report, reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the current TV advertising ecosystem and what steps can be taken to improve the health of the industry.

Hind started by outlining several points of strength the report found in the UK’s TV advertising trade. Firstly, despite declining audiences, TV remains unparalleled in its ability to deliver the same message simultaneously to millions of viewers, reaching existing and potentially new customers on an enormous scale.

Secondly, Enders Analysis found that the pricing mechanism for buying TV ad space – where deals are struck against SAP – is generally viewed favourably by agencies and saleshouses, who consider it a dynamic way of establishing benchmark prices. Hind notes that the advent of broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) services and linear addressable has allowed broadcasters to bridge the worlds of TV and digital advertising by facilitating greater targeting and recovering some of the lost linear reach among younger audiences.

Enders Analysis also found that the TV advertising supply chain was seen as more transparent than for digital, which is overwhelmingly traded in the complex space of programmatic. In their supply chain study published in 2020, ISBA revealed that 15% of advertising spend on programmatic was unattributable, with only half of the investment making it to publishers.

One weakness in the UK’s TV advertising space outlined in the discussion was the uncertainty of future revenue streams for broadcasters. Hind said, “Currently, linear deals are based on share of budget and VOD [are based] on volume. Deals based on share of budget give little certainty of revenues [broadcasters] will take in any given year, just the relative share of an advertiser’s TV budget. Its very difficult to plan business without certainty of future of revenue streams”.

To redress this issue, Hind recommended that the deals across linear and VOD should both be made by volume: “We believe volume deals are more likely to lead to an improved TV advertising environment, rewarding advertisers that spend more or increase spend over a period of time, and providing broadcasters with greater certainty to invest in their programming and their ad product”.

Hind notes that advertisers have also felt the lack of a combined linear and VOD measurement solution throws doubt on the value of BVOD, as they cannot measure deduplicated reach and frequency, or get a clear sense of the efficacy of BVOD advertising compared to linear. Hind believes ad budgets could continue migrating to digital if the industry doesn’t coalesce around a suitable measurement and points to C-flight – the cross-platform campaign evaluation tool, spearheaded in the UK by Sky, ITV and Channel 4 – as a potential solution.

One aspect of the TV advertising industry Hind drew particular attention to was the strain placed on the relationship between brands and some agencies, due to a “misalignment of incentives”. She called for greater accountability and “transparent contractual terms in which media recommendations are totally impartial and based on the most effective outcome for the advertiser, not what’s more profitable for agencies”. She also stressed that advertisers must ensure agency remuneration packages make it sufficiently profitable to hold their accounts.

Virginie Dremeaux, Vice President of Marketing and Communications International of FreeWheel commented, “The research findings reinforce the continued positive trend toward advanced TV identified in FreeWheel and CoLab’s 2020 survey, with a third of TV ad budgets reportedly being assigned to advanced TV channels in 2021 compared to a fifth last year”.

Breaking down advanced TV advertising spend into VOD, CTV and OTT spend, the study reveals that UK advertisers expect an increase across the board over the next year, by +15.1%, +8.8% and +14% respectively, while agencies forecast an increase of +5.2%, +9.5% and +6.2%.

While both UK advertisers and agencies foresee dedicating more budget to advanced TV, they rank the key drivers behind the spend growth slightly differently. 53% of agency respondents chose linear TV reach extension as a main factor, and 50% ranked ad effectiveness. Advertisers focused on advanced TV’s targeting capabilities across audiences (66%) and platforms (56%).

Across all UK marketers, the ability to measure ROI remained of signal importance – with 42% of those surveyed affirming it as a major factor in securing buy-ins, and 39% ranked the ability to gather data to optimise campaign performance in-flight, as highly important. Agencies and advertisers differ slightly in the weights they assign to the drivers that will unlock further budget, with agencies (47%) more concerned with access to deterministic exposure data as a basis for measurement, and advertisers prioritising data integrations (41%) and trusted third-party certification (37%).

Despite these minor differences, Virginie Dremeaux highlights the shared conviction among UK marketers, about the indispensability of advanced TV for advertising: “Critically, there’s increased recognition from both groups of advanced TV’s potential to reach highly engaged audiences in premium video environments through effective ad campaigns. With greater education and experience, I’m confident advertisers and agencies can continue to achieve the return on investment they need from these channels.”

Methodology: The study was conducted between 23 July and 2 August 2021 in key European markets:  Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the UK, in collaboration with independent research company CoLab Media. In the UK, the survey was completed by 102 marketing decision makers or influencers – 40% of respondents comprised advertisers and 29% agencies, with the remainder being media owners or others. A variety of agencies took part in the survey, from small independents to larger conglomerates: 27% of the agencies surveyed in the UK had over 500 employees.

In Part One of our Future of TV Advertising event preview, we list some of the sell-side innovations you can hear about, what leading buyers are discussing, and the leading research that will be revealed. We also highlight the addressable TV advertising sessions. Look out for Part Two at the end of this week.

World-class innovation from the sell-side

• Rhys McLachlan, Director of Advanced Advertising at ITV, will discuss how a programmatic planning and buying system can ensure broadcaster sovereignty and maximise inventory yield. You can learn more about one of the most advanced broadcaster programmatic solutions anywhere (Planet V, which went live recently).
• KC Sullivan, President & Managing Director of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCUniversal will give more detail about the ground-breaking One Platform, which is a strategy to reach all audiences across every screen. The aim is to create a more relevant advertising experience for viewers and greater impact for brands. With One Platform, there is an opportunity for a better premium video marketplace that helps advertisers reach the audiences they need to drive better business results. You will hear how NBCUniversal is building an advertising division to reflect global consumption as well as harnessing the power of its international assets, including Sky.
• Australian commercial broadcaster Nine explains how it enables brands to match their customer data against its registered users so that, among other things, they can target known customers or find ‘lookalike’ consumers. This addressable solution uses a DMP integration and is fully automated and privacy compliant. It does not rely on cookies and every ad impression is linked back to a person. You will hear about the technology, the use-cases for buyers, how it impacts the efficiency of campaigns and the role of TV within omnichannel campaigns. The speakers are Ben Campbell, Director of Advertising & Data Products at Nine, and Michael Stephenson, CSO, Nine.
• Kevin Arrix, Senior Vice President at DISH Media Sales, will reveal how one of North America’s leading Pay TV providers has made its set-top box VOD advertising inventory available for private, real-time programmatic trading. This interview explores the key lessons and results from the implementation, which means STB VOD can be bought through the same programmatic demand sources as other owned digital inventory.

Up-to-date advertising research and fresh thinking

• ‘The Value of Attention, and How to Measure and Trade Upon It’ with Karen Nelson-Field (Centre for Amplified Intelligence)
• ‘Advanced TV Uncovered: European Landscape’ with Virginie Dremeaux (Executive Director, Product and Sales Marketing International, FreeWheel)
• Orlando Wood, Author of ‘Lemon’ and Chief Innovation Officer, System1Group, on maximising creative effectiveness by examining the features of successful online video advertising.
• James Fennesey, Global CEO, Standard Media Index, on understanding AVOD – the big players, their catalogues and their audiences.
• ‘How Broadcasters can Improve Share-of-Time with Young Adults’ with Tom Harrington (Senior TV Analyst, Enders Analysis)
• The future of viewing and ad-supported TV – what the numbers say. This panel looks at the VOD market, content investments and ad budgets with: Maria Rua Aguete, Executive Director, Omdia; Richard Broughton, Research Director, Ampere Analysis; Duncan Stewart, Director of Research, Technology, Media & Telecommunications, Deloitte.

 What the buy-side is thinking (from interviews or panel discussions):

• Kate Rowlinson, CEO at Mediacom, discusses advertising in the age of Covid, and especially the agency lessons we can carry forwards.
• Steve Bignell, CEO at PMX UK (Publicis Media Exchange) explores the unification of broadcast and digital advertising.
• Benoit Cacheux, Global Chief Digital Officer, Zenith, considers how we can better understand identity, behaviour and context
• Carl Bratton, Head of Effectiveness at Direct Line Group, looks at how we judge and prove the value of television.
• Jean-Paul Edwards, Chief Product Development Officer at OMD, gives his views on connected TV as a new audience and new data opportunity

How the industry scales addressable TV advertising

• ‘The Path to ‘turn on’ Addressability in Europe’ with Marcien Jenckes, President, Advertising, Comcast Cable
• ‘Unlocking Advanced TV in Europe: The Marketers’ Perspective’ with Tim Willcox (Managing Director at Amnet Programmatic Experts, Dentsu), Emmanuel Crego (General Manager, Values.media) and Emmanuel Josserand (Brand, Agency and Industry Relations, FreeWheel) (confirmed speakers).
• There is also a panel focused on ‘What Pay TV brings to the addressable TV party’.

You can see all the confirmed conference speakers here.

The conference agenda is here.

You can register for this online event here.

Enders Analysis, the leading research company, did not seek to sugar-coat its outlook for UK television advertising when it kicked off ‘The Future of TV Advertising UK’ online conference last week. “The economic impact will be very severe. This will be the biggest TV advertising downturn ever, and there is little chance of a swift rebound,” said Gill Hind, COO at the company.

“The sheer collapse in advertising demand is unprecedented, with campaigns deferred, cancelled or not booked in the first place. In the previous economic recessions during the past 35 years, plus the Dotcom bust of 2000-01, the negative impact [on TV advertising] was relatively short and the market bounced back soon afterwards.

“The year-on-year decline for the worst quarters has never been more than 20%, but we are in exceptional times and in Q2 this year the market will be down significantly more than that. Given that health experts cannot predict how long the UK will remain locked down, we cannot say when it might bounce back, and how quickly. However, the market could be down between 30-50% this year if things don’t improve.”

Analysing the market since 1986, Enders noted that the previous worst drops were approaching 20% during both the global financial crisis (2009) and UK recession of 1992, while the Dotcom bubble burst was nearer to 15%, and what is known as Black Friday (a stock market crash) in 1987-88 did not reach minus 10%. These are real-terms figures showing year-on-year changes to Total TV advertising quarterly revenues.

Enders Analysis has identified Channel 4 as the UK broadcaster that is most exposed by the crisis, as 81% of its revenue comes from advertising (compared to 53% at ITV, 7% at Sky and 2% for the BBC, with figures sourced by Enders Analysis). Channel 4 also has to reinvest all profit back into the business as part of its regulatory remit. “This means the company has very little headroom in any prolonged advertising downturn,” Hind warned.

Hind also worries about the knock-on effects of weakened public service broadcasters for independent production companies. “PSBs are the bedrock of the UK’s vibrant creative sector. Independent producers, under the terms of trade, can profit from the exploitation of IP for shows commissioned by the PSBs, which is one of the main reasons for the UK’s international success. In stark contrast, Netflix retains all the future production rights on shows it commissions and it can easily walk away from UK production.”

The impact of coronavirus consumed the first quarter of The Future of TV Advertising UK thought-leadership event, which was streamed last week. One important theme that emerged was how flexible television has proven itself in this crisis – with media owners, agencies and brands helping each other to collapse the timeframes needed to rethink messaging, change creative and get ads back in front of consumers.

Commercial flexibility (including around pricing and penalties) has been a key attribute – and many on the buy-side are hoping that television can keep at least some of its new-found agility when we slowly return to normal.

Another theme that stood out was ‘trust’ – trust in television as a source of news and information at a time of hugely disruptive change, uncertainty and danger. The contrast with fake news on social media was highlighted.

There was a consensus that television has moved even closer to the heart of our lives. Thinkbox, which champions TV as an advertising medium in the UK, is conducting a consumer study that has already shown how, for people that live alone, TV is giving structure to their day during the lockdown.

There were strong arguments that brands need to keep advertising if they can. ‘If they can’ has several caveats: brands need goods to sell and people to answer the switchboards to make it worth investing, but they also need to be relevant to the current circumstances – and a brand could actually damage itself by advertising the wrong things or taking the wrong tone today. And they need the budget, of course.

It was also clear that many speakers carry the hope that this unprecedented crisis will change viewing habits on a more permanent basis – whether by introducing youngsters to the intoxication of large, shared news and entertainment experiences where they feel part of something bigger than themselves, or simply by educating people to the depth of a broadcaster VOD catalogue and the box-sets within it.

Daniel Bischoff, CMOO at RTL AdConnect, the sales house that helps buyers reach European television viewers in around a dozen countries through a single buy, via RTL Group properties and partner broadcasters, said: “The world after the coronavirus crisis will be a different one, but right now we are engaging with a new and broader target audience, especially with more youngsters. That will help us in the long-run to connect with those consumers and help brands to connect with them.”

One immediate impact, “has been to demonstrate the enduring strength of TV to inform, educate and entertain, with increased engagement across the board,” according to Hind at Enders Analysis. She picked out the BBC for special praise, saying it “arguably has a central role in unpicking the events for the population with a front-footed approach that is necessary and admirable.”

“The need for news is greater than ever before – it’s importance has sky-rocketed since the crisis began, up 124% in the first three weeks of lockdown,” she said, quoting BARB figures.

Nicole Greenfield-Smith, Head of Research at Thinkbox, told the audience that for many, the government briefings have become appointment-to-view events. Thinkbox is conducting a three month qualitative study of twelve households to understand their relationship with TV at this time, which is the basis for this and other observations she made.

“Most of us have a long history of watching TV news. It is seen as a credible and trusted source and people [on the study] talked about that at length,” she revealed. “Many are mistrustful of news on social platforms, a mistrust that has been heightened by fake news around Covid-19. TV news is considered the pinnacle of journalism for many people.”

Thinkbox believes the value people place on television is providing a halo effect for advertisers who are still in-market. Greenfield-Smith reiterated that TV is not just a valued source of content, but is viewed as a trusted and truthful medium – one that is crucial to viewers at the moment. “This is a good opportunity to start building a brand relationship with consumers and extending brand relationships.”

She referred to BARB figures showing that UK television viewing is up 24% since the lockdown began, and gave details of the early data from Thinkbox’s consumer tracking study. The homes involved represent people who previously commuted before the lockdown, and those who have school-aged children, and people who cannot work because of the Covid-19 crisis.

“The first, really positive finding, is that TV is uniting households and families,” said Greenfield-Smith. “TV has always played a crucial part in binding households together, but that role has been amplified since lockdown began. More than ever, it provides a shared experience.” The BARB figures back up this finding, with shared television viewing up 37% in the period.

Thinkbox found that for some families in the study, the lockdown is a rare period when they have the chance to spend downtime together – and with few alternatives, television is where they spend it. “Lots of our households previously led quite separate lives, with partners working different shift patterns and the children often out. TV is bringing them together around a shared routine. We have a couple who had their first movie night together, ever.”

Television is providing much-needed talking points. “Our lives have shrunk and most of us do not have as much to talk about anymore, and [study] respondents say they need to find a connection and points of conversation and commonality with people beyond their homes,” continues Greenfield-Smith. “TV is brilliant at finding those common points of reference in spades [in large quantities].”

Turning attention to consumers and brands, Bischoff (at RTL AdConnect) referred to a large-scale study by Kantar in late March asking what consumers expect of brands during this crisis. Happily, for all media, the last thing on the list (in terms of popular answers) was the expectation that brands should stop advertising.

“This is quite logical – we are used to having a lot of brands around us and seeing our favourite brands on TV and other media, and they give us a sense of normality; they reassure us,” he said.

While it understandable when advertisers pull their budget to focus on short-term liquidity, RTL AdConnect is advising that this should only be a temporary measure. “Under-investment now does not ensure ‘mental availability’ and endangers future profits,” Bischoff declared.

He also referred to a study by the Italian broadcaster RAI about what consumers want from brand communications during this period. Across all age groups, the answer from Italians was that they want to know what the brand is doing for consumers, and what their purpose is, during the crisis.

In addition to this common answer, older consumers want to know the purpose of brands at a national level – so what they are doing for Italy and the Italian people, plus pragmatic advice on using their products. Younger consumers want to know how brands can help them make the best of their time at home, and they also want to know how brands can entertain them.

Bischoff noted that it is very important that brands strike the right tone during this crisis. Drawing upon the findings in the Kantar study and advice that RTL AdConnect is giving to the market, he noted the need to: have a strong product focus and relevant attributes; convey reassuring normality; show emotional support; make sure consumers know where they can find your products; accept the new reality; and show that you are thinking about consumers and you are there ‘with them’.

Natalie Marshall Foxwell, Managing Partner at PHD Manchester, the media agency, said a surprise outcome from the crisis is how the country [the UK] has warmed to the idea that brands have a requirement to do good – to the point where they actively expect it. “There has been huge cynicism around brands in the past [regarding brand purpose] but right now, if you are meeting a genuine need and have the right tone of voice and you are not just jumping on a bandwagon, then the tracking we have is that audiences are really receptive. They expect it.”

Bischoff pointed to ITV [the broadcaster] advice to advertisers right now: show a clear and appropriate consumer benefit; show your role in the world; be honest and transparent; strike the right tone of voice.

He also provided a list of what brands must not do, namely: do not contradict government guidance; do not appear to profit from this crisis; do not come across as short-termist or opportunistic.

RTL AdConnect laid out the arguments for why advertisers need to keep up their brand spend during the present economic deep-freeze. The company has gathered together a series of seminal effectiveness studies that demonstrate what happens to profit and sales if a brand pulls its advertising, drawing upon work from Thinkbox in the UK, Boston Consulting Group in Germany and Peter Field, among others.

“The impact is that if you pull advertising for a full year, it will take five years to recover your sales volume,” stated Bischoff. “If you cut your advertising in half, it takes three years to recover the pre-cut sales levels. And if the gap between share of voice and share of market is more than 10% [the former being the lower], you lose 1% market share year-on-year.”

He pointed out that right now, media efficiency is high due to the bigger audiences and lower demand for advertising [bringing with it lower ad rates] but the post-Covid economic recovery will reverse both trends (demand will rise, audiences will fall). “Competition will be more intense. Competitors will be pushing into the media space again, meaning that share of voice will be harder to obtain, and prices will definitely go up,” he commented.

Natalie Marshall Foxwell picked up on the lower cost of TV, pointing out that advertisers are getting far more reach for their money right now. “You have to ensure the right message at the right time, though, and not just take airtime for the sake of it.”

PHD is also witnessing smaller brands using TV who, before the cost deflation, found this channel cost-prohibitive.

Sam Taylor, Head of Group Commercial/Performance Marketing, Direct Line (the group that contains a number of insurance brands, plus roadside vehicle rescue and legal services) represented brands during this discussion. For many years, his company bucked the trend towards focusing on activation at the expense of brand building, and he characterises himself as aligned with Binet & Field on the subject of brand/activation balance. But before getting into whether CMOs should maintain branding budgets, he gave some insights into why some brands have paused spending, even if it is short-term – and they can be very practical reasons.

“We must ensure we manage our marketing spend with our capacity on the frontline [literally call centre staff with phones]. There is no point increasing sales volume if nobody is answering the phone, and in the first few weeks we had a massive drop in [call taking] capacity.”

Even moving ahead (and Taylor says his team is “now injecting energy into what happens in the rest of Q2 and H2”) Direct Line has to spend more on ‘below the line’ marketing directly to customers, a task that is competing with media for budget.

Taylor said his approach to a recession would be to maintain brand spend but reduce activation budget if less consumers are converting in the market. Noting the focus on effectiveness at Direct Line, with the aim of growing the business and margins long-term, he said: “Turning stuff [advertising] off won’t help us on the other side [of the crisis]. We want to come out of this as a strong brand so that we can dial-up our activation spend afterwards.”

Brand-building is not going to be the right answer for everyone, however. Advertisers must adapt their brand strategy to be relevant, before advertising. “If you can’t do that, get off TV because it won’t do you any favours or drive your brand metrics up,” Taylor advised. He also acknowledged that there are small companies with limited cash flow who just cannot afford advertising and who, if they do not stop spending on it, will literally go bust.

So, what about going to the CFO to argue against advertising budget cuts if there is a recession – is that a fool’s errand? The question referred to marketers in general. “It is, if it is the first time you have walked into their office,” said Taylor. “Marketers need to build a relationship with the CFO and demonstrate consistently the effectiveness and ROI of advertising, and build the trust that allows you to then go and ask to maintain spend.

“We have invested time in educating our teams internally and we have not needed a conversation about budgets yet.”

At Direct Line, the finance department asks marketing for their projection of what would happen after the crisis if any budget – and it is performance budget that is higher on the agenda – was cut. In other words, they defer to the marketing experts. “That would not have happened if we had not invested 4-5 years in demonstrating our credibility,” Taylor declares.

“At some companies, marketing departments are still known internally as the ‘colouring-in’ department and those teams have no chance – their money will be switched off. It all comes down to the credibility your marketing department has.”

If brands do want to change their media strategy, the next question is how far this is even possible, according to Taylor, referring to whether you have the flexibility to defer campaigns or adjust budget, or move money, change creative or produce new creative at minimal cost, and what penalties there are for changes. “This is part of the ongoing conversation. What all this has taught us, as an industry, is the need for increased flexibility on TV.”

Broadcasters have previously spoken about their flexible thinking and working in the current crisis (see story here) and Christian Kurz, SVP Global Consumer Insights at ViacomCBS noted during ‘The Future of TV Advertising UK’ that the entire industry (buy-side and sell-side) has pulled out all the stops to help marketers stay in-market or get back into the market quickly – demonstrating how flexible television can be.

“TV is not known as the fastest and most responsive media when it comes to changing creative, but we have seen some really good creative projects, with everything being edited remotely. There are new workflows to facilitate fast-changing messages – partly because people don’t want to advertise something they do not have anymore  – and then get ads on-air quickly.”

Marshall Foxwell (at PHD Manchester) is also enthused by the response to this crisis. She pointed to the way that talent have been filming voice-overs or even shoots in their own homes, rather than in studios.

“Credit where it is due – the TV industry had to transform itself pretty much overnight, and not just TV but everyone associated with getting media live. That includes the speed with which agencies can turn things around and how quickly brands can make decisions. I hope all this sticks [after the crisis].”

The Future of TV Advertising UK also revealed some of the viewing trends during the lockdown. One of these, highlighted in the Thinkbox consumer study, is that people are now starting to confine their news consumption to windows – especially early morning and evening – in order to reduce anxiety, including for children. The government’s daily briefings are avidly watched.

Thinkbox pointed to massive audience increases for light entertainment, like ITV’s In for a Penny (up 47%) and Channel 4’s Gogglebox (up 41%). Their study reveals that families are looking for content that promotes a sense of togetherness, with universal appeal. People are catching up on dramas that were missed when first aired.

Jonathan Lewis, Head of Digital & Partnership Innovation at Channel 4, reported record-breaking audiences across the network and huge figures for Friday night viewing, in particular. “Young audiences are coming back in large numbers, and engaging with the All 4 platform more than they have ever done,” he added.

Comedy is big, and viewers have found their way deeper into the 15,000 hour All 4 VOD archive, enjoying old shows like The Inbetweeners and Father Ted. Lewis reported that there has been a notable spike in VOD viewing on the television set at Channel 4 (with the balance shifting from mobile devices).

Separately, Enders Analysis provided figures (source: Enders Analysis, BARB/AdvantEdge) showing that TV set viewing generally (not just VOD, and not including multiscreen) is up at least 20% in all age groups except the over-65s, where it has risen 17% during the lockdown. For ages 4-15, TV set viewing is up 24%, and 16-24s television set viewing is up 23%. TV set viewing is up 20% for the 25-34 and 35-44 age bands, and by 25% among 45-54s, and by 27% for 55-64s.These figures cover weeks 12-15 of 2020.

Hind believes commercial broadcasters will enjoy more of the benefits of the audience uplift over time. Enders Analysis figures show that until now it is the BBC that has gained most, with huge uplifts especially in the dayparts where it has news and news related shows. “As people settle into their new routines and viewing turns away from the news and other Covid-19 related programming, we would expect commercial viewing to pick up quite considerably.” Commercial viewing is up 15%, so far, she pointed out.

Unmatched TV set usage, which could be SVOD, YouTube or gaming (among other things) is up 30 minutes per person per day in the past few weeks, Enders Analysis noted. Game console usage accounts for a quarter of the increase in unmatched usage, with some of this explained by a desire to socialise at a safe distance.

Audiences for sports channels (Enders Analysis and BARB/AdvantEdge figures, year-on-year, showing pre- versus post-lockdown) are down 77% – perhaps remarkable for how small the drop is when there is zero live action!

Meanwhile, the Thinkbox consumer study also highlights a desire for nostalgia. According to Greenfield-Smith, “Respondents talk at length about the need to escape from reality and the need to use programming to transport them back to happier times in their life.”

Shared viewing is also inspiring shared activities – around cooking, craft and exercise, for example. This is considered an opportunity for advertisers. “There are genres of content that brands may not have considered before, but if they fit into these categories, this is a chance to create contextual awareness,” said Greenfield-Smith.

One potential threat to TV audiences, even in a lockdown, is a lack of new programming, itself caused by the lockdown. Hind predicted that within a few weeks, TV schedules will be almost unrecognisable and expressed her concern for the independent production sector and its staff, including freelancers. Broadcasters have been very supportive,” she added.

Kurz used production as another example of how the television industry has proved its agility, with programmes being made from staff homes, including news. But he also acknowledged the diminishing content pipeline across the industry.

“We are seeing a significant uptake in TV and video consumption overall, but on the other hand scripted productions have shut down and we are only just seeing the first ones returning to work, but in a different way. Eventually some platforms are going to run out of content.” He predicts that entire television seasons will be pushed back in the same way as movie releases. “I would not be surprised if the fall season comes in January [2021],” he said.

The anecdotal evidence, the views of speakers at The Future of TV Advertising UK, and results from consumer studies suggest that right now, television has returned to the very centre of national life. The Covid-19 crisis has also reminded us why we need regulated media – people could literally die from misinformation. Television has received a brand boost all of its own, and broadcasters are hoping that brands will want to exploit its halo effect.

“TV and BVOD is one of the most trusted [media] platforms and we hope we can build on the momentum when we come out of the crisis,” Jonathan Lewis at Channel 4 said. Noting the particular value of the big screen to advertisers, he highlighted brand safety, viewability, completion rates, co-viewing (with advertisers only charged for a single impression), and the ability to target against demo or customer interests as some of the reasons advertisers should spend on TV.

Hind predicted that two post-Covid outcomes would be more VOD viewing and an accelerated transition to programmatic advertising, which makes for happier listening at Channel 4 than her earlier remarks, given the broadcaster’s strong focus on both. And she does not expect Pay TV to gain subscribers, as in previous downturns, now there is so much streaming competition.

“In the last recession Pay TV benefited with new subscriptions, with the Premier League and movies viewed as a relatively cheap form of family entertainment, but it no longer has that [value for money] advantage,” she suggested. She also referred to the latest Netflix results, with total global subscriptions up 16 million, “and that only reflects the start of the Covid experience.”

Marshall Foxwell acknowledged that advertising money has left the market, but much of it has been deferred rather than cancelled. She hopes that the market will return to “some semblance of normality” within a few months. Right now, most people would probably accept that as a good outcome.