Ad buyers will not care where their ads are viewed…eventually

The advertising industry will reach the stage when buyers no longer care whether their commercial is shown on a catch-up player service on a tablet or in the middle of a popular linear show, but there is work to be done before we reach that point. Kevin Gallagher, Chief Information Officer at Channel 4, is confident that eventually buyers will be prepared to ‘trade’ inventory in this way. When it comes to multiscreen advertising he comments: “We are on a journey. The advertising industry is keen on multiscreen advertising but a lot of agencies are still set up as separate digital and TV teams, and that makes it difficult to combine the two [different formats in common campaign planning/buying, etc.] There is a huge appetite for good quality video inventory compared with banner advertising,” he adds.

Channel 4 has an advanced multiscreen strategy built upon viewer engagement, which includes learning more about its audience by persuading them to give their personal data during a registration. The broadcaster has 10 million registered users for its 4oD catch-up service. This has enabled it to start selling demographically-based advertising. A targeted ad trial last year, in cooperation with seven UK advertising agencies, was a great success.

“We found that the advertising was more efficient by a factor of over 100%, which you would probably expect using demographics, but we also found that there was a massive gain in effectiveness, with top-of-mind brand awareness doubled, ad recognition up two-thirds and click-through rates more than doubled and even tripled in some cases,” Gallagher reported in a recent Videonet webcast.

“If you can get an advertisement to the right people they are much more likely to interact with it and also to remember the brand. So we can give advertisers a better success rate and it gives the viewer a more relevant ad,” he continued. “Hopefully it means fewer ads for the same revenue as well, thanks to a [revenue per ad] uplift there.”

Encouraged by the trial, Channel 4 has sold a proportion of its VOD advertising on a targeted demographic basis in 2014 and has given itself a bigger proportion of demo targeted ads to sell next year. “That is going very well at the moment,” Gallagher reported.

The Videonet webcast, featuring Channel 4, IHS Technology and Piksel, investigates how you can increase viewer engagement with a multiscreen or second screen service, how you can generate more revenue and takes a look at broadcaster data strategies. You can listen to the on-demand version free here.

More reading: The like-for-like trading, where advertisers accept spots across different screens as being of equal value, is already happening in the U.S. thanks to ABC Unified.