TV or not TV…
James Grant, UK country manager, Vindico, says “instead of looking at TV to defend itself, I think the advertising industry should be pushing the digital VoD market to step up and improve”…
Has anybody else noticed that according to the trade press, TV is on its deathbed? At Media360 there were jokes that nobody would be watching ads on TV in two years time. Meanwhile All3Media has launched an app that allows them to go direct to consumers with shows including TOWIE, Skins and Embarrassing Bodies. Finally General Motors has decided its not good media practice to buy ad space in Super Bowl 2013. No wonder Thinkbox are back on the… box.
By now all of media and marketing land is aware of the rise of online video amid the supposed decline of TV, but in all honesty, it’s both boring and untrue! TV is here to stay, it’s just going to be sharing the sofa with its digital friends.
Television is still unrivalled in its capacity to provide shared viewing and appointment to view content, meanwhile online video is proving a hit with viewers as it provides on-demand, multi-device, portable and 1-1 content choice. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and neither will one of them ‘win’. As households, we will continue to watch some content together, and some content we’ll pick to watch only when it suits us – but it will be delivered digitally and that means the real question facing the industry is how will the two integrate, and what will that mean for us as consumers, and as ad-folk?
I see this as the meeting of two minds, television is the undisputed king of content and digital is the queen of data. As a result, the advertising models of the future will come from the digital side, all under-pinned by the data industry. It started with search and since then growth in advertising has been fuelled by the digital marketplace, driven by the availability of data and the ability to monetise it, all the while supporting the free provision of content.
So instead of looking at TV to defend itself, I think the advertising industry should be pushing the digital VoD market to step up and improve. Embracing standards for instance; we have industry standards but not all of the industry sign up to them – some of the IAB’s members are still not offering view-through metrics on their content, even though the VAST standard is a fully accredited IAB programme. Also, are we as an industry doing enough to deliver transparency? Is in-banner video really being substituted for pre-roll and are we doing enough to police it? Real time reporting, is that too much to ask? Why is frequency capping, or even frequency serving, (potentially even, tailored advertising) still quite difficult to action and report on from the buy side?
All of the above is possible today on VoD campaigns. Now imagine that it is possible across all of your VoD and TV campaigns… the ability to both deliver and report across all screens, all programmes, all advertising, all audiences etc. What if we could add the audience impact of second screen activity such as Twitter and Zeebox to the overall reach of a digital TV spot?
I believe now is the time for the two sides of the market to start collaborating, it’s happening on the consumer side of the market with companies like Zeebox and Twitter, who are leveraging the best elements of TV to drive their audience, now the advertising side of the market needs to follow suit.
And so what will the impact be as consumers? Well, our children will probably laugh at the idea of an aerial on the roof, our broadband bills will inevitably increase and we will continue to moan about footballers’ salaries, as the most prized TV content today becomes increasingly valuable in a fragmented viewing landscape. I think the biggest question, however, is what the hell are we going to call it?! Is it still TV? Is it video? Digitised broadcast content? I think I’ll stick with plain old television, if only to avoid a public ear-bashing from Tess Alps.