Thinkbox
TV, the box in the corner. Or so it used to be. Today it’s more likely to be a 50-inch flatscreen mounted on the wall – in the living room, bedroom, or kitchen. My mind used to boggle when my parents would recollect when there were only 3 channels – and they were in black and white. I’m sure my children will recoil in horror when I tell them “When I was your age, there was no such thing as TikTok or YouTube…”.
Suffice to say, TV has been evolving since it’s very inception, yet as viewers we have become apathetic to these changes. Can you believe that only 25 years ago, terrestrial TV viewers were treated to a grand total of 5 TV channels, the analogue to digital switchover which revolutionised free to air TV only completed less than 11 years ago in 2012. Back then, a TV buyer’s job was easy. A few spots in The Bill, London’s Burning, and Brookside and they’d be down the pub.
Of course it wasn’t quite that easy, but planning was relatively basic. However, as Sky, Channel 5 and free-to-air digital channels expanded the number of commercial TV channels from 2 to 200+, the job of the TV buyer has become inherently more complicated. Over that time, our understanding and the development of tools to aid that understanding hugely improved, leading to tactical and strategic planning to meet client objectives and KPIs.
In the last 5 years we’ve seen rapid change and fragmentation in our TV or, dare I say, AV behaviour, and we’ve had to reset and recalibrate those tools and understandings. It’s in this complex, fragmented AV space we find agencies endeavouring to navigate the conflation of currencies, metrics, universes, panels and so on. Clients cannot and should not underestimate the value of strong AV strategy in these unprecedented times and, as Tom Denford said back in 2016, it’s time to fall in love with your TV buyer.
Despite this chaos, though, the consumer remains resolute and absolutely spoilt for choice. It’s never been a better time to watch TV regardless of what screen, platform or content you are watching.
Good TV strategy blends the art of craft planning with the distillation of the copious datasets at our disposal to arrive at evidence-based approach to meet the clients brief and deliver on KPIs. This sounds easy on paper, but in practice it’s hindered by a skillset that was nearly lost to the industry as digital performance metrics which favoured short termism took precedence over the longer burn of broadcast mediums.
Over time and with the plentiful research from the likes of Binet and Field, we now appreciate the synergistic mix of all media channels and their effect on both short- and long-term business results.
However, faced with such an overwhelming sea of data, it can be difficult to see the wood for the trees – not to mention the measurement challenges to demonstrate how all AV channels work holistically. Agencies have employed in-house tools to try and bridge some of these gaps, but it’s incumbent on the competency of the human input to ensure the accuracy of the output. In-house tools also aren’t universal in their outputs, so in that case we turn to industry bodies to provide the information.
From an industry we have seen huge strides from Barb with their generational shift in TV and TV-like measurement in the form of the Router Meter launched back in November 2021. They went even further in February this year when they announced how they would be measuring fit for TV content on video sharing platform such as YouTube.
This, together with the previous measurement from Barb, provides a cornucopia of industry agreed data and potential insight – providing the inquisitive planner/buyer can find and reveal it. It also allows us to measure how TV stacks up with any other video consumed in the home, regardless of device. Linear commercial TV is still the biggest AV channel and will continue to deliver strong reach figures and ROIs, but this new level of insight forces us to reset our preconceptions of what TV or AV is and focus on the best AV mix to deliver our clients KPIs.
Take the 16-34 phenomenon of Love Island. Not only is it one of the single biggest 16-34 shows on linear TV but over 50% of the young viewing is consumed on a BVOD platform – in fact, the show accounts for 42% of all ITV’s BVOD impressions during June and July, rising to a staggering 61% for 16-34 impressions. Failing to buy the BVOD element of the show would be a huge missed opportunity and a potential reach loss of up to 10pp for a 16-34 campaign.
YouTube is another example. It commands significant viewing time, but less than 30% is viewed on a TV set and 22% is watched by children. If a client wanted to reach an ABC1 audience with a 30” second creative, YouTube’s skippable format and its younger, mobile first audience may not be the correct fit. Conversely though, a brand looking for younger audiences would find YouTube a very good fit but would need to use creative that is fit for platform rather than just running the same copy as for TV.
Holistic AV planning is necessary in the fragmented world we find ourselves in, but the merits of each platform do need to be considered and catered for. By doing this the effectiveness of campaigns can be supercharged.
As just mentioned, making creative that is fit for purpose is a very easy win in this space, but taking effectiveness a stage further, many of the online video platforms are addressable, which we are certainly utilising to good effect from a targeting perspective. But the opportunity for creative is untapped. Circling back to the short- and long-terms effects of media planning, AV can now do a job at all stages of the funnel and recognising which platform to utilise at each stage unlocks this potential.
Agencies are harnessing the power of data-driven AV making use of first and third person data to enhance effectiveness of campaigns, and at Publicis our solution is Lift. Lift is a suite of thee AV products that provide clients with a unified view of audiences across an increasingly fragmented video ecosystem. The products are powered by Epsilon’s proprietary CoreID technology, empowering brands to make more informed targeting decisions whilst also helping us generate greater spend efficiency and rebalance reach and frequency across linear, addressable, and connected TV environments.
The AV landscape will continue to evolve. Linear remains a crucial reach driver, but we can now supplement it with a huge variety of AV products on our plans – from broadcaster VOD to social video. But even as AV continues to change and adapt, there are some things that remain timeless. The craft of planning has never been more important, nor the need for human perception and instinct to bring the data to heel so we can get the most out of today’s AV.