Sessions will also explore programmatic TV and a new era of broadcast-like ad break management, as well as CTV as a linear experience and the impact of digital-first content discovery on planning decisions.

Notable speakers include Rita Ferro, President, Advertising Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution, Disney, who will discuss the latest trends impacting brands and consumers, how Disney has reimagined its own organisational structure to meet the needs of modern advertisers, its latest efforts in data and measurement innovation, and its stance on streaming on the eve of the ad-supported launch of Disney+.

Jeremi Gorman, President, Worldwide Advertising, Netflix will talk with Dave Morgan, Chief Executive Officer, Simulmedia, about the potential reach for ads shown on Netflix, likely ad loads, format preferences and format innovation, how Netflix inventory will be made available to buyers and how it can be planned into campaigns that span other media owners (on streaming and broadcast linear).

Other fireside chats throughout the course of the conference will include Mike Shaw, Director of International Ad Sales, Roku, Kevin Arrix, Senior Vice President DISH Media, and Patrick Béhar –Chief Business Officer, UK & Ireland, Sky.

The ‘Total Video session’ on Day One of the event will feature Stephan Breneau, Global Head of Product Solutions at Wavemaker, who will explore how AI and ML makes it possible to optimise reach across overlapping audience segments – improving reach for each segment without diminishing reach for the others.

The session will also include a panel with Stéphane Coruble, CEO of RTL Ad Alliance, Vicky Fox, Chief Planning Officer of OMD UK, Paul Evans, Consultant CMO and Growth Advisor (and ex Global Head of Media at Vodafone), Martyn Bentley, Commercial Director, UK Audience Project, Pieter Vervoot, VP of Entertainment Products, Liberty Global, and Graeme Lynch, VP Demand, EMEA Magnite.

The panelists will explore reach and planning as major SVODs introduce ad-funded tiers, the impact of digital-first content discovery, what each ‘channel’ adds to a cross-platform campaign, how to maximise incremental reach and guarantee rapid reach-build as viewing fragments, and overcoming barriers to holistic planning. Kantar and Samsung Ads will also deliver presentations during this session.

In the ‘Growth through targeting session’ on Day Two, Lara Izlan, Director of Data Strategy, ITV and Hannah Barlow, Deputy Controller, Advanced Advertising, ITV, will explain how to build a more joined-up approach to data – connecting viewer touchpoints across content, marketing, product and advertising.

The session will also feature a panel including Laura Chaibi, Director, International Ad Marketing and Insights, Roku, Jayesh Rajdev, Controller of Advanced Advertising, ITV, Adam Lowy, Chief Convergence Officer, Synamedia, Steve Pareira, UK President, Captify. The panelists will investigate winning tactics when using addressable TV to drive incremental reach, how to increase the accuracy of television-based targeting, how brands without D2C relationships maintain targeting rigour in the privacy-first era, and the value of contextual targeting as a substitute for audience-based targeting where privacy permissions are not present.

The event will take place over December 6-7^th. You can register here to attend.

Viewers can use text or voice search to find specific games, teams and leagues. To use the search function, viewers will scroll down to Sports on the Home Screen Menu, or search for “sports” (or a specific team or league name) in Roku Search or using Roku Voice. When they click on the tile for their chosen game, they will find streaming options for that event from supported channels. Viewers can also select various Zones specific to individual sports or explore rows of free sports content.

The hub currently features content from a range of sports including pro and college (American) football, pro and college basketball, hockey, baseball, and football. Services which have content featured on the hub include FuboTV, Paramount+, Peacock, FOX Sports, DIRECTV, Prime Video, Sling, The Roku Channel, TNT, TBS, and truTV.

Roku has also said it is making more free Sports content available on its platform, including the sports and entertainment talk show The Rich Eisen Show (exclusively streaming on The Roku Channel) as well as the new Roku Original series Emeril Tailgates.

Roku says: “No more clicking through multiple channels or trying to figure out where the game is on — the new Sports experience is a visual, immersive destination on your Roku device that’s accessible right from the Home Screen Menu, putting your favourite games, events, and more right at your fingertips.”

At a later time, AMC Networks’ anime service – HIDIVE – will launch as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel. Additionally, AVOD content from AMC Networks – including movies and popular reality shows from WE tv – will be offered on The Roku Channel.

The agreement will continue to make AMC Networks’ targeted streaming services (like AMC+, Shudder and Acorn TV) available to viewers through Premium Subscriptions on The Roku Channel.

Kim Kelleher, Chief Commercial Officer of AMC Networks, says: “This is an exciting expansion of our relationship with one of our most important and long-term partners, which will make even more of our acclaimed and popular programming available to The Roku Channel’s audience including, for the first time, the addition of 11 of our curated FAST channels.

“It also serves our strategic goal of distributing and windowing our high-quality content across a coordinated ecosystem that includes our own networks and streaming services and leading partner platforms. We are thrilled to be in business with Roku and to have expanded this key partner relationship for years to come.”

Rob Holmes, Vice President, Programming, Roku, comments: “Through this multi-faceted expansion of our partnership, we are pleased to provide our audiences with even more top content, plus exclusive programming, from AMC Networks, and look forward to connecting AMC Networks with viewers across The Roku Channel’s programming ecosystem.”

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.

Viewers will be able to press “OK” with their remote on a shoppable ad, and then proceed to check-out. Their payment details will be pre-populated from Roku’s payment platform, Roku Pay, and after tapping “OK” on the Walmart checkout page, the order is placed. Users will then receive a confirmation email from Walmart, including shipping, return, and support information.

Roku’s ad-buying platform for TV streaming – OneView – will exclusively have the ability to activate and measure these shoppable ads. The company believes its ad tech stack – with targeting, optimisation and measurement capabilities – will “bring all the benefits of streaming TV advertising…to the commerce partnership.”

Through Roku Brand Studio, advertisers will be able to design creative and branded content specifically for a TV streaming and shopping environment.

Peter Hamilton, Head of TV Commerce at Roku, said: “We’re making shopping on TV as easy as it is on social. For years, streamers have purchased new Roku devices and signed up for millions of subscriptions with their Roku remote. Streaming commerce brings that same ease and convenience to marketers and shoppers.”

Both FOX and Discovery have said they will use Roku’s watermark solution to verify their inventory, and ad technology providers Google, HUMAN, Basic Technologies, Innovid and Magnite, have announced they will be integrating the technology after it is rolled out. Roku-owned OneView will be the first ad buying platform to offer inventory automatically validated by the solution.

Louqman Parampath, VP of Product Management at Roku, said “As America’s No. 1 TV Streaming Platform, we are uniquely positioned to help the industry preempt device spoofing. This is powerful and free technology that will help advertisers accelerate their shift to TV streaming with even more confidence.”

Bill Murray, Vice President of Programmatic Solutions, Discovery, commented “Roku’s Advertising Watermark assures our advertiser clients that they are buying genuine Discovery inventory on Roku devices. We’re excited that Roku has brought its data, operating system, and ad technology together to easily prevent ad spoofing.”

Ad verification platform DoubleVerify analysed over a trillion CTV ad impressions across 80 markets between May 2020 and June 2021, and found significant adoption of spoofing scams over bot scams by fraudsters. Bot scams experienced a 44% drop, and over the period observed 36% of all CTV fraud was conducted through spoofing. DoubleVerify reports that, in Q4 2021, 18% of unprotected CTV ads traded programmatically were either invalid traffic or fraud.

Total net revenue for the company has also continued to rise, with a growth of 55% YoY, to reach $2.77B. Its platform revenue (which includes its streaming business) has climbed 80% YoY and the company’s ARPU now stands at $41.03 (growing 43% YoY).

Anthony Wood, CEO of Roku, says: “2021 was another strong year for Roku, as we achieved record revenue, gross profit, adjusted EBITDA, and ARPU. Roku’s founding vision remains true: All TV and all TV advertising will be streamed. Almost every major media company is reorienting its business around streaming and has launched a flagship service, spending billions on content and marketing to attract and retain subscribers. At the same time, with the significant gap that exists between viewership and ad budgets, we are still in the early days of the secular shift to streaming. Our competitive advantages – the Roku operating system, The Roku Channel, and our ad platform – position us strongly to continue leading this shift in the years ahead.”

Research by Conviva – a measurement and engagement platform for streaming media – shows that, in North America, 40.5% of Q4 2021 big screen viewing time was delivered to a Roku powered device. Analysing nearly 3 trillion real-time transactions per day for the quarter, Conviva reveals that this figure for Roku powered devices represents more than the shares of Fire TV, LG TV, Apple TV, and Samsung combined. In 2021, Roku said it was the Number 1 selling Smart TV OS in the United States.

Roku says OneView is attractive to advertisers because it combines Roku data from its streaming platform, ad space from The Roku Channel, and Roku ad experiences that “go beyond the traditional TV spot.” The company also believes that audience guarantees on OneView, ahead of upfronts, will make it easier for marketers to plan and measure an entire TV streaming upfront with apples-to-apples measurement to linear TV.

Additionally, media sellers that use OneView as a demand source can use proprietary data signals from Roku to enhance the accuracy of their own audience guarantees and therefore waste fewer ad impressions to meet them.

Tyler DeNicola, Vice President of Programmatic Revenue and Partnerships at A+E Networks (a media and entertainment company and broadcaster) said, “A+E Networks is excited to work with Roku to utilise its OneView Ad Platform audience measurement capabilities for our clients, and to help advance the industry as a whole. Now we can offer brands improved performance, less waste and new guarantees across our streaming ad inventory.”

In 2015, Roku adopted Nielsen guarantees for its TV streaming platform and last year the two companies announced a strategic alliance geared towards shaping “the future of media measurement and TV advertising in a streaming-first market”. Since then, Roku has acquired Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising business, including the audience measurement company’s video automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion technologies (DAI). The acquisition occurred as Roku has sought to accelerate the launch of an end-to-end DAI solution, enabling TV programmers to replace traditional TV ads with targeted ads in real-time.

Louqman Parampath, VP of Product Management at Roku said, “We believe that all TV ads will be streamed and that all TV ad measurement will be automated. Now, upfront advertisers in OneView will be among the first to see audience overlap across major devices, channels, and publishers on their plan. Our goal is to offer diverse tech and measurement offerings that move the industry forward”.

Shaw said: “Now we’re in a world where TV is seen to be able to do more things in the funnel. Yes, it can build brands but it can also drive consideration. It can also be an activation tool now that it has more of a response mechanism. Reach and frequency alone only measure a little bit of that”.

At the Future of TV Advertising Global event, London, he discussed the importance of independence for measurement with Eleni Marouli (Head of Market Developmens, Ofcom), Joe Hayes (Sales Director UK, Audience Project), Liz Duff (Head of Media and Investment, Total Media) and Rich Astley (Global Chief Product Officer, Finecast).

Hayes argued that new measurement companies found it difficult to enter the market while retaining their independence. Partly, he believes, this is due to the challenges they face while questioning conventional wisdom in a market with established players, each having their own stake in ad revenues. He said: “The companies that have the funds to build the measurement platforms are companies that have huge revenues coming from ad spend – that’s a huge problem for the industry”.

Hayes emphasised that within the cross-platform measurement space, brands are looking for the equivalent of the “gold standard” that BARB represents for measuring reach and frequency on linear TV. Shaw also noted that broadcasters, publishers, advertisers and agencies are able to trust the measurement provided by BARB, but expressed his doubt that one body could measure for all parts of the funnel in the age of Total TV.

Astley agreed that independence of measurement is important, but distinguished between measurement used as a currency and measurement for “effectiveness purposes”. He said, “Measurement as a currency needs to be independent, needs to be third party and held to an extremely high standard because it’s the basis on which potentially billions of dollars are traded – that needs an independent approach.”

While stressing that measurement for effectiveness still requires trust, he argued that measuring responses across many metrics on TV will require platform owners, media owners and agencies working together while recognising there might not be one single answer to the questions media buyers have.

Duff reiterated the importance of paying attention to effectiveness while planning media. She said: “If you only look at short term measurements, you make the mistake of optimising rather than driving new audiences. You can look at long term measures like econometrics, that can prove the value of TV rather than just asking ‘how many people are watching’, but then sometimes that can lead you down a wrong path as well”. She called for a holistic approach to measurement that pays heed to both reach and frequency, as well as effectiveness.

Hayes warned against making artificial separations between reach and frequency on the one hand, and effectiveness on the other. “I think that measurement – I’m talking about audience reach and frequency – is the baseline by which you build effectiveness tools. We don’t know how to understand effectiveness without understanding reach and frequency – it’s endemic to TV conversation”.

A key theme was the growing uptake of streaming services – accelerated by the pandemic – which Mike Shaw believes represents a “tipping point” towards TV consumption becoming all-streaming-based over the coming decade. Referencing a BARB report published earlier this year, which shows that two-thirds of UK households have access to at least one SVOD service, Shaw noted that Roku’s own data – based on the survey results – shows that 90% of Brits are now streaming. He also emphasised the significant demographic shift in viewer behaviour revealed by Roku’s survey data, with three-quarters of those aged 57-70 now incorporating streaming into their video consumption diet in some form. The pandemic has been a key driver in the growth of streaming, Shaw remarked: “There are various analyst estimates as to how far [the pandemic] has kicked the progression of streaming forward, but somewhere between two to five years is not a bad estimate.”

The uptake in streaming services is reflected in the evolution of content available on these platforms; over half of the survey respondents stated that they watched sports content through streaming services. In the same vein, half of streaming households are watching premium movies at the point of release on streaming services rather than at the cinema.

Shaw moved on to discussing AVOD services specifically, the evolution of AVOD content and the implications of Roku’s research for media buyers. He challenged a traditional view that there are core services (like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video) that have premium content and very large production budgets, and then there are ad-supported services with “random shows people have never heard of”. This view assumes the latter group is not a premium environment that advertisers want to support. Shaw warned that this view could be misguided.

He explained the price appeal of AVOD services for consumers, saying: “There’s an assumption that [household] budgets are limitless, and every time someone launches a new service it’ll get this amazing take-up, because we’ve been conditioned to think that, because of what happened with Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+. But that’s not the case. We know there’s subscription fatigue and household budgets have a limit of various levels.” At the same time, the higher engagement levels and growth that streaming services are experiencing has meant that Roku’s ad-supported service has been able to add original premium content (instead of just licensed content sets), while ensuring the AVOD remains free to consumers.

Shaw also outlined some of the benefits and opportunities for media buyers advertising on streaming services. Firstly, it’s clear that advertisers pursuing incremental reach beyond linear broadcasting will need to invest in CTV. As we report elsewhere, TVSquared released a report last month that suggests advertisers need to commit 10% of TV ad impressions to OTT/CTV to gain at least 15% in incremental reach for campaigns, regardless of budget. (Its analysis was based on data from billions of ad impressions, collected across 20 converged TV ad campaigns through its ADvantage platform).

Shaw referenced the 2021 Ofcom Media Nations report that reveals that only 57% of adults aged 16-34 are reachable by linear TV on any given week, and the Internet Advertising Bureau’s 2021 Real Living Study, showing that only 40% of the same age group are reachable via linear on any given day. For companies that have traditionally relied on the enormous brand building power of linear TV “that causes a really big problem, but it’s not insurmountable.” He went on to say, “Audiences are still watching TV – more than ever before – you just have to plan for it differently and this is where the real challenge is, especially when you think about tools and the trading systems in place. Old ones are not fit for purpose”.

An important takeaway from the discussion is that advertisers need to appreciate the differences when it comes to advertising on AVOD services versus traditional Pay TV. Shaw emphasised that AVOD represents a world where ad loads are a little lower, but engagement levels are greater, creative formats are more plentiful, and more data can be overlayed. In contrast to the “lean back” mode of linear TV consumption, where viewers switch onto a channel and pay attention to the programming inconsistently, the same content will receive higher engagement when sought after and played through streaming services, giving advertisers a creative canvass more geared to capturing their attention, he argues.

Shaw also remarked on the ad microtargeting benefits of AVOD services. With the evolving content within these ad-funded streaming services, advertisers can still ensure their campaigns appear within premium programming, and in Shaw’s opinion they have a greater capacity to adjust their messaging for different groups of consumers, rather than the less specific messaging which might be directed towards “people who watch Coronation Street or like sports”. Better measurement is also a key factor in the appeal of AVOD for advertisers. “It might seem that it’s tough, and it’s definitely a journey, but you’re able to get a lot more measurement out of the systems that are being developed for this data-enabled streaming TV environment than you can get out of an analogue world.”