TV and online video: making 1+1=3
Aligning TV’s mass reach with online video’s mass addressability, you create a modern multiplier for advertisers, says Videology’s head of global TV strategies, Rhys McLachlan.
Despite the cavalcade of technologies and screens that have invaded our homes, our handbags and manbags – and our social time in recent years – television remains the pre-eminent entertainment format in all modern markets. For this reason, I believe it’s high time – overdue, in fact – that we collectively doff our caps and raise a glass to TV, our lifelong companion.
TV continues to be the warmly welcomed guest in our living rooms and there is every reason to believe that we will continue to gravitate, in mass, towards the reliably cosy glow of nightly entertainment for years to come.
Modern television formats are finely honed and rigorously scrutinised to be the definitive article in entertainment, information and education. We truly live in a golden age of television entertainment and it’s little wonder that Hollywood power players are queuing up to appear on the little-screen. A roll-call of TV productions from the past 24 months is quite staggering, from the sublime (Coen Brothers), to the ridiculous (Matthew McConaughey’s road to reinvention via True Detective).
There are signs that the digital democratisation of TV distribution is having a small, but significantly erosive, effect on TV.”
The ongoing ability of TV to provide compelling entertainment experiences to its legion of disciples has, of course, provided an unparalleled platform for advertisers who are increasingly adept at utilising TV’s core strengths to connect with their consumers.
The effectiveness of TV as part of the communications portfolio continues to set standards that other media cannot achieve. Studies from Ebuiqity, the IPA, Thinkbox (natch!), and Deloitte all testify to TV’s contribution to the fiscal health of both brands and the broader, global economic outlook.
Those of us that work in online video should be grateful for the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of giants. But here’s the rub: despite TV’s headline-level resilience against tech development and ‘screen choice’, the reality is there are signs that the digital democratisation of TV distribution is having a small, but significantly erosive, effect on TV.
Ironically, this is largely due to the increasing cross-promotional activity that channels run, encouraging viewers to ‘catch-up’ on missed content via their online player options. Choice has been placed squarely in the hands of viewers and they are increasingly minded to act.
At a ‘gross’ level, TV viewing is up. This is without dispute; headline stats show in every developed market, average viewing hours and ads viewed are on the increase. More ads are being broadcast on more TV sets than ever before. Go a little deeper, however, and you see a markedly different set of statistics.
We’ve run the TV viewing data from TV panels, across eight Western TV markets, and at a 1+ coverage level there has been a significant and marked decline in Audience Reach. The delta, between 2009 – 2013, is anywhere between -4% to -10% decline in net reach. This is true of all markets where we’ve collected the data (Spain, Italy, France, UK, US, Ireland, Canada, Australia), and across all main TV target audiences. This essentially means that the modern state of TV is fewer viewers watching more TV.
TV remains unrivalled in its ability to drive mass reach, and therefore mass awareness, for brands.”
Concurrent with the gradual decline in TV reach, online video, as a media format, has experienced unparalleled growth as viewers migrate their video consumption to alternative screens. If you combine TV viewing behaviour with video viewing behaviour (as distributed over IP – i.e. online video) there are significant growth figures to embrace.
Simply playing a ‘numbers game’, however, is disingenuous and short-sighted. Effective screen-neutral video planning is about engaging with the TV buying community to educate and enable them to harness the power of video formats across both platforms. It is not a ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ exercise.
TV remains unrivalled in its ability to drive mass reach, and therefore mass awareness, for brands. It’s unlikely that online video will have that ability in the short term, but what video can do in complementing this mass reach is where the benefits become more applicable for brand advertisers.
Videology’s suite of ‘TV Amplifier’ products have been engineered specifically for the TV buying community and are powered, in part, by raw TV panel data. These tools are increasingly aiding TV buyers to determine not only the most effective budgetary splits between TV and online video, but also to make investment decisions against key campaign criteria.
Our clients are now able to supplement TV exposure and frequency levels by utilising online video to drive either unique or incremental views to those who have been exposed on TV. The ingestion of TV panel data (Nielsen/Kantar, etc) has been instrumental in providing single-source empirical planning and executional insight that enables TV and online video to be planned as a singular media that delivers maximum campaign effectiveness for advertisers.
For example, we’re now regularly seeing unique incremental reach performance of between 4% and 10% for advertisers executing online video as part of their overall video strategy.
Furthermore, beyond the pre-planning stages, our dynamic analysis of TV viewing data, at a campaign level, means that online video campaigns can be adjusted and calibrated, in real-time, to genuinely and effectively complement TV activity for our clients.
By planning and implementing TV and online video holistically, aligning TV’s mass reach with online video’s mass addressability, you create a modern multiplier for advertisers – or, as I am fond of saying, making 1+1=3.