Misquoting Microsoft and the future of TV
Tess Alps, chief executive of TV marketing body Thinkbox, predicts what the future could hold for TV and gives her thoughts on last week’s comment piece from GoViral’s Jimmy Maymann.
The Mystic Megs of media have been out in force recently, gazing into their crystal balls, peering at tea leaves and sniffing the magical winds of change.
In last week’s Media Leaders, Jimmy Maymann, chairman of GoViral, gave his view on what 2010 held in store under the heading of ‘Online marketing is the future’.
So you’ve had ‘Online marketer predicts online marketing is the future’. This week I thought I’d treat you to ‘TV marketer predicts TV advertising is the future – integrated with many other types of marketing, including internet-based activity, the most exciting of which is online TV’.
One of the trends Maymann identified was that “the power of online video will… continue to grow”. He is right but unfortunately he misquoted from – already flawed – research by Microsoft to support his point: ” …based on current trends, Microsoft is estimating that internet video consumption will outstrip traditional TV viewing in June 2010, averaging 14.2 hours per week against 11.5 hours for TV.”
In actual fact, the Microsoft research (‘Europe logs on’, released in April last year) estimated that the total time spent on the internet would overtake linear, broadcast TV viewing. Maymann is mistaken when he says it was estimating online video consumption alone.
But Jimmy’s misquote is rather irrelevant when the whole of Microsoft’s assertions were – and remain – fantasy. It flies in the face of much robust, impartial research, BARB and Touchpoints among them, to suggest that the amount of time people spend online will overtake their TV viewing at all, let alone in a few months’ time. And it’s an increasingly misleading distinction.
A fundamental reason why the Microsoft research was flawed is that it was based on the claimed behaviour of an online panel. Microsoft eschewed the likes of BARB, the most rigorous audience measurement system ever devised, which tells us that people in the UK watch an average of over 27 hours a week of broadcast TV (in line with the rest of Europe). Instead, it pinned its assertions to the memory of an online panel which managed to underestimate the actual amount of TV watched by over half.
I won’t rake over the many other reasons why the research should be taken with liberal salt but will point you to this statement issued at the time by egta, the European body representing TV advertising, if you are interested.
Jimmy Maymann is right to say that online video will grow, but why pit it against TV as Microsoft did? The part of online video that is of most interest to advertisers is online TV – this is the area driving the most revenue growth and the bit consumers really care about. Online TV ads are prime advertising real estate because they are sited around specially chosen to view quality TV content, viewers have allocated time to view so are relaxed, and the sound will be on – one of those very basic issues that can be overlooked. Plus the ability to click on pre-roll TV ads and go straight to a brand’s website, without having to go through a search door, is worth a fortune. Great TV ads already ‘go viral’ online without much intervention from marketers, thanks to broadcast TV starting the ball rolling, though we always recommend that advertisers do their own uploading and seeding too.
YouTube recognises that advertising around proper TV online is the real deal. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, stated last September that ‘ …there is no ad business around UGC’. On signing a deal with Channel 4, YouTube didn’t announce that they had ‘got some more online video’. They realised they already had swathes of that. They announced ‘YouTube’s got TV’.
Anyway, I thought I’d offer some thoughts on the future of TV.
We will be watching about 3.5 hours of TV a day in 2020
Microsoft’s crystal ball was a little cloudy. In a decade of spectacular growth of internet use and capability, the fact that people of all ages dedicate as much time as they ever did to relaxing with their partner and family watching immersive TV entertainment tells us that this is something that is utterly fundamental to human society and is not going to go away.
The technologies delivering some of it may vary – some will be delivered by the internet – but making time to watch TV together is a principle way of expressing relationships. That togetherness can now be expressed virtually too, with people talking, tweeting and status updating online about what they are watching, making live linear viewing even more relevant and rewarding.
Place-shifting will increase TV viewing
The vast majority of us want to watch TV on a gorgeous flat-screen TV set, but other devices are a fantastic convenience when you can’t get to one. TV viewing via mobile devices will grow but this viewing will be incremental to in-home viewing. What it will displace is not existing TV viewing but whatever medium you would otherwise have been consuming at your desk or on a train.
Live viewing will remain dominant
On-demand services are a wonderful way to catch-up with linear TV. But data from BARB showing the proximity of on-demand viewing to its original transmission in cable homes proves the overwhelming influence of channels and their schedules; 50% of on-demand views are seen within a day, rapidly declining to only 2% after 5 days. You might choose never to watch linear TV again, but what you watch on-demand will be largely shaped by the schedule, if only because of cultural references and conversations
TV advertising will remain a significant part of funding TV content
TV advertising revenues have been overtaken by TV subscription revenues in recent years. People are more than happy to pay for the added enjoyment they get from extra choice and improved picture quality. But TV advertising is huge, and has even increased its share if total advertising slightly in the last two years. People love good TV ads and find them the most acceptable – and effective – form of advertising. What I hope the future brings is an improved understanding of how TV drives online search and on- and offline purchases. With more TV with its own return path, we look forward to the correct attribution of cause and effect and an even more productive relationship with online media.