Thinkbox, Samba TV and Roku discuss who’s surviving and who’s thriving in the new world of TV
The TV industry is one of the longest established and most innovative media industries in the world. The first set of TVs featured small screens and bulky hardware and of course, limited content choices. Today, TV can be watched anywhere, anytime — from large screen projectors and flat screens through to on the go devices, and content? The choices are endless.
This exciting industry was the hot topic of discussion at this year’s Advertising Week Europe Event in May 2022. With over 5 stages and more than 10 tracks, the event covered every aspect of marketing, advertising, technology and creativity.
As a leader in the Connected TV (CTV) ecosystem, Roku sponsored the TV and Media Track, which brought together experts to discuss the latest trends and ideas ranging from audience measurement through to TV streaming and how TV is evolving.
Roku’s Director of International Ad Marketing & Insights Laura Chaibi was on the panel discussion covering “The Future Of TV: Will You Survive Or Thrive?” along with Dallas Lawrence, SVP, Head of Communications and Brand at Samba TV and Lindsey Clay, CEO of Thinkbox. The lively session was moderated by Bloomberg journalist Ivan Levingston with a fully booked out attendance including top UK brands, agencies and media owners keen to hear what’s next for TV.
Laura, a well-known media and measurement industry pioneer, having worked across brands such as the BBC, Yahoo and France Telecom Orange establishing media measurement across many digital media channels including video measurement.
Her earliest foray into digital video goes back to 2005 when she measured the first live streaming TV program delivered on a mobile handset (5 years before smartphones) while at the BBC.
“I have not been so excited about media like I am now. Digital somehow went far too mechanical focusing on the plumbing, the pipes, and scientific process of optimisation and communications excellence became lab experiments for test and learn with micro decisioning on micro spends.
The beauty of TV is creativity, storytelling and mass communications craft for brands. For media, and for advertisers , there is an opportunity ahead of us as connected TV pairs the best of TV with the capabilities of digital bringing end to end solutions that marketers need at entry level budgets that they can afford” she said.
Enhanced television, interactive television, search, online web, video, mobile, and social, have all been areas she has and continues to work towards improved measurement; Connected TV was a natural extension to focus on and Roku, seen as the category disruptor by some, is the best place to help the industry progress..
Armed with vast experience by all panelists, the panel was a lively debate of three seasoned experts talking about how TV will thrive and Lindsey clearly stating TV has and continues to be a pillar of media consumption with the sheer volume of premium media entertainment that consumers have to watch.
3 Key Takeaways
1. Are the ad dollars where the audience is?
Samba TV released new research, said Dallas, that revealed traditional TV viewership continues to evolve in the UK, US and Germany. Moreover, compared with Q1 2021, the top networks in the UK like BBC One, ITV and Channel 4, all saw drops of 14% in average daily reach this quarter¹.
Streaming TV adoption being the key driver with consumers moving from linear to on demand viewing.
The challenge is that 95% of advertising money spent on traditional TV in Q1 2022 reached only 55% of UK households, he added¹. This means that the same 55% of audiences were being bombarded with the same ads resulting in massive wastage of ad dollars.
The majority of clients’ advertising budgets are still dedicated to traditional TV. As Laura pointed out, when brands are spending on high production value, they want to know that not only is their ad being seen but it’s being seen in a brand-safe environment.
Still, TV sits at the epicentre of the ecosystem. Lindsey said that it can reach a massive 80% of UK audiences in a week, which includes all forms of TV — not just traditional TV. “This is the way [in which] we need to look at it together. There’s no point in just linear TV,” she said.
2. A new way of thinking about TV
Due to the stellar content quality and choices, audiences are still figuring out what they want to watch, how they want to watch it, and where they’re going to watch it, said Dallas.
This means that while different models may be phasing out or coming in, the medium itself i.e. TV is thriving, he added.
Planners and advertisers need to start thinking about TV differently. Many Chief Marketing Officers today are digital-natives and want the measurement and targeting abilities of digital from TV, the panelists said.
“We have this massive tension where broadcast has always been about programs that are universally for everyone, and [there are] technologies that are universally trying to personalise and so you have this tension of one-to-one with one-to-mass and how these two universes are crashing together,” said Laura.
Media planners and advertisers want the best the digital medium has to offer in terms of targeting and measurement along with the mass reach of TV. The tension exists because “those two measurement solutions are polar opposites,” Laura explained, and they have to come closer together to help brands and planners achieve the incremental reach they need.
“Those require solutions at both ends of the scale,” she said.
3. TV is not only here to stay… it’s thriving
All three panelists were firmly in the ‘thrive’ camp. Dallas pointed out that “we have never had better content in the history of the media,” but at the same time, “we’re seeing the most fragmented and fractured media television landscape in the history of human civilisation.”
Through the session, and even in the wider industry, traditional TV and TV streaming or CTV are considered to be mutually exclusive. But that’s far from the truth, according to Lindsey.
“It’s never either this or that. It’s always some combination in the middle,” she asserted.
She went on to say that broadcasters are anything but ‘traditional’ and they are in fact the biggest players in the CTV ecosystem. “I think it's an incredibly exciting time,” she said, adding that she rejects the notion of TV being an old-fashioned concept while CTV is the exciting new future.
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