The search behaviour habits now being leveraged can be combined with any of 1,000+ existing AdSmart attributes – from postcodes to life stage, or mosaic groups – to refine campaigns. Ruth Cartwright, Investment Director at Sky Media, believes that, “Being able to embrace the best capabilities of digital but in the brand safe, big-screen world of TV, makes campaigns more relevant and impactful.”

Sky says its latest advertising innovation is driven by industry demand to bring digital and TV campaigns closer together. “Search Behaviour attributes allows brands, for the first time, to target audiences based on specific online search behaviours, including frequency and intent,” the company explains.

Seven search behaviour categories are available at launch: Home & Garden, Travel, News, Job & Education, Arts and Entertainment, Games, and Pets & Animals. As well as mixing this knowledge with existing AdSmart attributes, it can also be matched to advertiser first-party data. “As an example, a custom campaign could see a holiday or insurance company target those who are actively searching for holidays or flights. This could be further refined or creatively adapted to those looking at beach, sightseeing or ski holidays in a specific area of the country,” Sky Media explains.

The Search Behaviour targeting capability has been developed in conjunction with Captify, which boasts of having the largest onsite search dataset outside walled gardens, harnessing 1+ billion searches a day on 2+ billion devices covering 6+ million websites from over 1,500 publishers (and all in five languages!). Captify emphasises how up to date its data is (real-time), demonstrating interests and needs right now. Captify talks of having “the first intent-powered audience platform for the open web”.

She outlined research from Médiamétrie – France’s TV industry JIC – and Ekimetrics, which shows that TV makes a 40% contribution to global incremental sales (while having only a 31% investment share) and makes €5.6 global ROI for every euro spent on the channel. According to the research, TV has a better ratio between global ROI and global contribution to incremental sales than any other channel, including search, social, OOH, radio and display. The research also shows that, in France, the weekly reach for linear TV is over 90% for all target groups.

While TV does not have a problem with effectiveness, Kolymayer believes that it does have an attribution problem. She remarked: “This is because 50% of the effectiveness of TV is long-term effectiveness and it’s quite difficult to demonstrate. Usually we use marketing mixed modelling – long-term models – to demonstrate this effectiveness, and it’s more complex than what we do in digital, with attribution to the last click.”

Kolmayer believes that France experienced a major revolution in its TV measurement methodology this year. In June, the members of Médiamétrie voted to include audiences at home and out of home (who are watching on TV sets) in its measurement in 2024, as well as audiences viewing on all other digital devices. She said this development came as Médiamétrie committed to developing a cross-media measurement, which will include tools to be able to de-duplicate contact and measure incremental reach.

In 2024, TF1 expects to be able to sell all of its inventories – including linear and non-linear on all devices – together. She said this will be done “probably programmatically and probably as well on the same currency.”

Kolmayer said the French broadcaster had developed a broader range of content in AVOD and FAST channels over the last year, and has started to deploy this OTT offering on connected TVs. She revealed that TF1 had experienced a 68% increase in AVOD consumption over the year. In addition, it registered a total of 2.7 billion views on its catch-up TV and news service.

In 2022, TF1 had over 250 advertisers on addressable TV according to Kolmayer, and the broadcaster wants to build sales partnerships with social media platforms: “We have a big community of fans on social networks and we intend to develop addressable inventory there as well.”

Despite a fragmented ecosystem and changes in viewing habits, Kolmayer believes linear TV can still offer a unique proposition on the advertising market. She said: “For broadcasters, the winning combination is to keep on providing brand safe and engaging content for delivering mass reach, but to also develop addressable inventories at scale.”

The report and app emerges from the work conducted by the cross-industry task group established by the DTG last year, focused on targeted advertising. Members of the group – which included Arqiva, Channel 4, Google, S&T and TP Vision – aimed to evaluate the status of HbbTV implementations in currently deployed UK DTT devices for the substitution of broadcast ads with addressable TV. The group was also tasked with developing a simple HbbTV application for a demonstration.

Ranjeet Kaur, Testing Associate Director and Project Lead, DTG, says: ““We know the TV landscape undergoes constant evolution (and sometimes revolution!) and it is dynamic, important work like this, with organisations that are leading the pack, that ensures we are guaranteeing excellent viewer experience throughout. The DTG occupies a unique position at the epicentre of digital TV and, together with our partners, we are defining the pathway to the future of television.”

The study tracks the impact of Mirriad’s virtual product placement solution. In contrast to pre-roll or mid-roll ads, the company’s AI technology analyses video content to identify contextually relevant moments where brands can appear within the programming itself, either in the form of product placements or poster/billboard ads. The technology then inserts the brand virtually, post-production.

To accurately track real life exposure, Kantar used a weekly updated survey capturing consumers’ exposure to programming which aired most recently with in-content ads, and collected actual TV delivery data of the campaigns attained from industry standard sources. This methodology was adopted for various U.S., UK and German campaigns across the telecommunications and CPG categories.

The report finds that, when combined with TV spots, in-content ads increase ad awareness from 68% to 78%, and consumption of the advertised product from 34% to 56%. Favourability also increases by 5ppt, as well as brand awareness by 2ppt.

The impact on those exposed to in-content ads when compared to viewers who were not exposed was also significant. Brand awareness experienced an uplift of 18ppt (from 36% to 52%) while ad awareness rose by 25ppt (from 26% to 51%). Favourability and consideration also increased by 6ppt and 9ppt, respectively.

Kantar also reports that viewers are seven times more likely to prefer in-content ads over TV spots, while four in five viewers (79%) embrace in-content ads as a format.

The report says: “Historically, product placement required long planning cycles, which involved uncertainty over delivery, and presented limited formats. Advertisers now have a dramatic improvement of options available to reach their target audiences. Today, in-content advertising can be integrated into content post- production, delivering a multitude of advantages for brands.”

A bespoke linear channel schedule can be created for each viewer based on recommendations intelligence, with an EPG created to accompany it – stretching maybe six hours into the future. The channel is created from a succession of VOD assets stitched seamlessly together. The two companies believe personalised linear channels solve the ‘paradox of choice’ caused by the vast volume of VOD content now available to consumers.

A spokeswoman for Viaccess-Orca (VO) says the VOD content that is assembled into a linear channel is still covered by a VOD licensing deal – so this capability is a new way to surface content within the VOD window.

Viaccess-Orca (which provides OTT and TV platforms, content protection and advanced data solutions, among other things) contributes its content discovery solution, using viewing behaviour and preferences to drive recommendations. The VOD-to-linear channels do not have to be completely personalised: they could be assembled according to mood, genre or even trending topics.

Ateme (known for its video compression and streaming technology) contributes its NEA solutions for streaming, including the origination of linear channels from VOD and catch-up archives. NEA also includes the server-side ad insertion (SSAI) that enables replacement ads to be inserted into the VOD content. NEA draws upon cloud-native and containerised technology and the VOD assets do not have to be moved ahead of processing.

NEA is integrated with the VO content discovery solution and also with Viaccess-Orca’s Targeted TV Advertising Solution. This provides the advertising decisioning – who should be served which ads (based upon the audience profile an advertiser is looking for and the audience profile VO can determine from operator first-party data – notably viewing behaviour within a household).

The new VOD-to-linear channel capability was demonstrated at IBC in September, where VO reported good traction among visitors. The solution is aimed at platform operators and, as with any addressable advertising, it requires the collaboration of the content owners (unless operators own the content themselves).

“We’re thrilled to team up with Viaccess-Orca and redefine the linear TV experience,” said Ahmed Swidan, Director of Personalized TV at Ateme. “One of the greatest challenges for viewers today is finding what to watch.

“With this new service, we’re enabling viewers to discover the most relevant content in a live watch mode, keeping them watching longer and increasing monetisation opportunities for our customers. Viewers can sit back, relax, and enjoy several ‘For You’ live channels with their favourite shows back-to-back. No doubt these personal channels will increase loyalty to the service.”

Dror Mangel, Director of Data-Driven Product Management at Viaccess-Orca, adds: “The Personal Live Channel service is an innovative step forward for video delivery. Collaborating with Ateme, we have solved viewers’ paradox of having too many content choices. And we have offered service providers and content owners many more opportunities to display ads, giving them higher revenue potential.”

What started as novel and helpful thanks to cookies, became overused and concerning. Increasingly consumers of all ages, locations, and persuasions have a better understanding of cookie-based ad tracking and have expressed concerns about its usage. Legislators got involved, and browsers began responding en suite by limiting or outright banning global cookies, while setting the stage for their own targeting capabilities. While their ultimate death keeps being forestalled, a day without cookies is on the horizon. As that day keeps getting pushed back, one likely reason is that it’s hard to wean ourselves off them without knowing what’s next.

While 84% of consumers care about privacy and want greater control over how their data is used, they also don’t want to return to an advertising stone age where ads for products they don’t want dominate their screens.

With changing industry standards and compliance requirements, it’s difficult for brands and their media partners to plan long-term advertising efforts that will be both effective and privacy-compliant. But that balance is going to be more critical than ever going forward.

There will still be a place for targeted ads, but they must have greater privacy controls. Advertisers, agencies, and technology vendors are all debating how to future-proof their cross-channel marketing and brand marketing optimisation. The goal is to identify a privacy-safe plan for ad tracking that doesn’t rely on cookies.Cookie-dependent advertisers must rip up their old playbook and begin investing in the future. The changing privacy landscape presents a catalyst and an opportunity for advertisers to rethink measurement. But while there are many potential solutions, all will not pan out, and others could lead advertisers astray.

Here’s what businesses need to consider to future-proof their advertising in the ensuing cookieless environment.

Begin weaning yourself off cookies

Even though Google has not yet banned cookies from Chrome, other elements make cookies less desirable. Users can easily block cookies on their mobile devices, and cookies don’t easily track in a multiple device world (e.g., users browsing a phone versus a desktop or watching streaming on a tablet or a CTV). Advertisers can no longer depend on cookies for advanced targeting.

Hashed emails have significant limitations

“Hashing” emails allows one website to obscure and “pass off” a user’s email to another destination via an anonymised customer ID. So they can track customers who logged in across multiple browsers or social channels. While it’s a novel idea, it cannot scale because only 10% of Internet traffic is logged in at any time. It’s too small an audience to develop a modern advertising strategy around.

Clean rooms show promise, but aren’t quite ready

A clean room can create a safe environment to combine anonymised first-party data with third-party data from ad platforms and publishers. It provides a promising opportunity to analyse ad tracking data while staying privacy-compliant. It is reasonable to think that almost every advertiser with at least $1 billion in sales will use them in the next five years, and the IAB is expected to release its first attempt at clean room standards later this year.

The work IAB and other organisations do to create standards is important as there is and will continue to be a tension between the privacy restrictions the clean room owner puts in place and the usefulness of the queries those clean rooms can support.

In addition, clean rooms typically contain data from only a single company. So, if you’re running a cross-channel campaign, you’ll likely need to analyse data in multiple clean rooms. In addition, clean rooms are normally run on first-party data, which some advertisers may not have due to the nature of their business. Therefore, the debate over privacy versus usefulness means that clean rooms are more theoretical than applicable right now. A lot of work and compromise must occur for clean rooms to be ready for use in all campaigns.

Micro cohorts: ready for primetime

While clean rooms show great future promise, micro cohorts are the biggest opportunity today for privacy-first, cross-platform campaigns. Micro cohorts deterministically isolate small groups of people without needing cookies, creating the opportunity to scale quality reach.

Even so, there are still challenges. It is difficult to distinguish between office and home IP addresses at scale, and some device IPs may be blocked for privacy reasons, like cookies. Also, creating successful micro cohorts requires significant investment in processing large data sets using complex algorithms. Nonetheless, micro cohorts present a promising alternative in a privacy-protected future.

There’s a lot to take in and debate. And no one solution will fit any individual advertiser. That said, the planning for the cookie-less future must happen now. And there are new approaches that are ready to use today and those that are more wait-and-see. Ultimately, the most important thing to do is to talk to your partners about the best privacy-safe plan for ad tracking for your business that doesn’t rely on cookies.

The companies say the partnership is designed to “unlock new insights and allow for seamless activation against high-performing audiences within a clean room environment” which will be powered by M1, Carat agency’s proprietary data and identity platform.

NBCUnified launched in January of this year, and is intended to be a fully interoperable platform, enabling marketers to connects data spines –from agencies, third-party technology platforms, industry-wide initiatives, consortiums – in privacy-secure way.

Heather Stewart, General Director, Global Media and Marketing Services, GM, said: “At GM we seek to deliver world-class customer experiences at every touchpoint and to do so on a foundation of trust and transparency. As marketers, that means responsibly engaging with audiences in ways that make sense and can add value to their lives. Leaning into more sophisticated addressable media opportunities, like the one we’re announcing here with NBCU and Carat, gives us a leading-edge in connecting with consumers today.”

John Lee, Chief Data Officer, NBCUniversal, commented: “The future of media is built on a foundation of first-party data, and our unique, three-way partnership with General Motors and Carat’s M1 platform is an important first step into that future.

With this integration, GM will be the first brand to come to market combining the power and depth of their first-party automotive data with that of NBCU’s first-party data on consumer media consumption that comprises over 200 million consumers and 80 million households, creating more powerful insights and higher performing target audiences for activation.”

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.

Docherty argues that Think360 – ThinkAnalytics’ personalised content discovery platform – can enable service providers to both predict churn and prevent it. He says that the company is tackling churn from two angles: through content discovery, service providers can prevent churn by showcasing and recommending the right content to viewers, ensuring they keep returning to the service.

“On the other side, we can predict who is likely to churn and help operators understand why so they can take appropriate actions. We’ve got a lot of valuable data on audience behaviour and content intelligence, and use that as input into AI/ML processes to predict churn.”

According to Docherty, the company can then determine why any particular viewer is likely to churn. This allows service providers to make changes to prevent future subscriber loss. The company says its customers typically see viewing time per subscriber increase by up to 60%, and the number of channels watched increasing up to 35%.

Docherty argues that in a cost-of-living crisis it is more important than ever to engage viewers through content discovery and effective recommendations. He remarks: “All the operators are under pressure – whether from the cost-of-living crisis or just in general. Pay TV operators want to minimise churn and stop people bleeding over to OTT services. With SVOD type platforms someone can unsubscribe at a touch of a button and a month later they’re not there anymore. SVOD services need to demonstrate value for money to subscribers just as much Pay TV operators do.”

In the case of AVOD services, he emphasises that its vital to engage viewers immediately because users may access the service to watch one show they have heard about, and then never return if they are not presented additional content they might also be interested in.

AVOD service providers can also ‘hyper-target’ audience segments for advertising through Think360.

He elaborates: “We take our data and then – through ML processes – automatically segment your viewers into 160 IAB audience segments. That allows you to hyper-target ads campaigns and offer those audiences to advertisers.”

Docherty also spoke about the A/B testing features of Think360 and ThinkAnalytics’ recent collaboration with 3SS, a software provider for STBs and multiscreen entertainment. The collaboration will allow operators to conduct rapid A/B testing of any aspect of their service’s UX “using real-time granular data capture for ultra-personalised viewer experiences”.

“Companies which are data driven are the ones that are going to succeed because they’re looking at what is working and what is not working in the real world, and really listening to their viewers while acting on it quickly.”

He believes a significant benefit of conducting A/B testing through Think360 is that service providers can improve user experience without large infrastructure changes, firmware changes or a dedicated IT project. He says: “From a webpage console you can construct an A/B test in five minutes, publish it and then have all the insights and analytics to measure the outcomes.”

He continues: “In AVOD you obviously cannot just infinitely increase your ad loads, but you need to make more money – how? In-content is really the green field where you can go. Everyone who operates an SVOD service needs to rely on subscriptions, and is happy to make more money. The advantage of what we do is that it really works in every environment.”

Mirriad deploys it’s AI technology – SceneFinder – to analyse thousands of hours of video content and to identify contextually relevant moments where brands can appear within the programming itself, either in the form of product placements or poster/billboard ads. The technology then inserts the brand virtually, post-production. Mirriad is also fully addressable, with the ability to serve by audience, device, geography and platform. Beringer remarked that the company is working towards achieving programmatic activation this year.

According to data from Kantar, ad awareness among viewers exposed to Mirriad ads was 20 percentage points higher than for those who were not exposed, with brand affinity and purchase intent also higher by ten percentage points and seven percentage points respectively.

Beringer cites data from Nielsen which shows that 23% greater reach on average is achieved through in-content advertising compared to the reach of ads placed in adjacent spots to the same programming. “And that’s the average”, he continues, “We’re seeing campaigns which have 45-46% more people being reached.”

Beringer explains that these differences in reach and other KPIs is due to viewers being engaged in the programming they are watching, but typically tuning out or going to complete  small domestic tasks during ad breaks.

In addition to boosting reach and driving business outcomes, Beringer argues that viewers prefer the ad format significantly over traditional ad spots. Kantar data shows that there is a 6X preference for the company’s ad format, with 80% of viewers saying they liked Mirriad’s ad formats and a further 83% saying Mirriad ads integrated well with the content they are placed in.

Beringer believes that in-content advertising allows service providers to monetise their libraries of content, while simultaneously enabling advertisers to access untapped attention, relevance and reach without overwhelming viewers with ads.

He says: “You want to watch a YouTube video, for instance, and you’re forced to watch one or one-and-a-half ads, and after a few minutes you’re interrupted again with a mid-roll. The same happens of course when you turn on broadcast TV. In the U.S., out of one hour of content, 25% is consumed by ads – which is an incredible amount. It feels like you’re bombarded with ads.

“Our paradigm is the opposite. We go into the content and by doing so we’re opening this massive new market and giving content owners the ability to monetise the content that they have and distribute.”

He argues that the ad format can even reach viewers watching TV in SVOD environments without alienating them, through a “fusion of content narrative and story-telling, and brand narrative and story-telling.” He elaborates that, in real life, ads surround us constantly as we move about the world and therefore ads can appear realistically in content without seeming jarring.

He notes however, that it is important not to negatively impact users’ viewing experience by over-saturating programming  with in-content ads. He says: “Our systems are drilled to avoid exactly that, and content owners have no interest in over-polluting the content, either.

“If you start doing things which are inappropriate from a contextual standpoint, the viewer will react negatively and the consequence is that the impact for advertisers is not great. No one has an interest in doing something that is detrimental to the viewing experience.”

The platform is also equipped to ensure brand safety. Advertisers can specify contexts or emotional registers which they do not wish their brand to appear in, and the AI technology will avoid placing the in-content adverts within those environments.

Beringer gives the example of an alcoholic drinks brand: “You will want to exclude scenes with children. You will want to exclude driving scenes that come within several scenes after the ad placement. You can programme the system to exclude these scenes because you don’t want to have a bottle of whisky in an environment where there are children playing. You don’t want that as an alcohol brand and you don’t want that as a broadcaster.”

According to Beringer, Mirriad’s global inventory currently represents 82 billion impression media opportunities.