Futures for Advertising on Digital TV Platforms

Sydney.
Up next at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress is Robert Leach, Head of MCn Connect, whose interest is in digital television - and he begins by saying that interactive TV is now here; he finds it impossible to watch TV news without being able to 'press the red button' and get the latest news headlines. (Hmmm... Most Australians appear to use the Internet for this, rather than pay-TV?) Digital TV is changing rapidly. Does this mean the death of TV and TV advertising?

No, says Robert - we are watching as much TV as we ever have done, even though usage of other devices is also growing. Where the major growth area lies is digital video in its various forms. In the digital environment, devices have multiplied, but media are converging; the challenge for marketers and advertisers is to involve and engage audiences in video content. Where the Clinton campaign slogan in 1992 was "it's the economy, stupid", today the slogan for advertisers should be "it's the content, stupid" - if broadcasting or other media forms are declining, this is not the fault of technology, but of the content being broadcast. Great content will continue to attract a mass audience - but that audience may exist across a wide variety of devices from conventional televisions to online and mobile devices, scattered across time and space.

Ratings which look beyond live audiences to live+3 or live+7 (that is, timeshifted viewing by 3 or 7 days) show very different ratings for many programmes than conventional ratings systems, for example - and this must be taken into account by media programmers, marketers, and advertisers. The challenge is to think like entertainers, not marketers - creating strong audience engagement. This does not mean that the 30-second TV commercial is going to disappear; while free-to-air television around the world is likely to decline, the digital revolution also creates the greatest opportunity that advertisers have ever had.

Lines between what is and isn't television are being blurred, and there are a number of excellent examples for what opportunities this opens up. Some years ago, for example, a great 5-minute film would have had nowhere to go; today, there are plenty of opportunities to deliver this to audiences - e.g. through online or mobile media forms, but also through interactive TV ads on interactive digital television. (Robert points to the example of a recent Adidas campaign, which significantly boosted band awareness and purchase intent amongst viewers who interacted with the interactive ad.)

However, digital video recorders pose a new problem for television advertising - TiVo's slogan was that it "lets you record the shows you love without the ads you hate". There is little that's new about this - VCRs allowed much the same some 20 years ago. However, as it turns out, only a small amount of commercial viewing is timeshifted - in the UK, 87% of Sky+ viewing is still live, for example. This may change over time, of course, and by 2012, on-demand viewing in the US is forecast as 16% of total TV viewing. At the same time, it must be noted that video on demand also allows for the deployment of new forms of advertising - indeed, on-demand access to advertising itself (e.g. in the form of movie trailers or other product previews) is also growing... TiVo itself also offers quality advertising on its own platform, and online video advertising can be embedded into any number of Websites.

Thinkbox.tv in the UK has researched the effects of combined, cross-platform advertising (incorporating TV and online advertising in the first place), and has shown significant impact of such advertising; in the US, such advertising goes well beyond simple 30-second spots - here, advertisers truly think like entertainers already. A series of Webisodes produced by clothing company American Eagle (but featuring its logo only in a very subtle way) generated a very significant spike in Website visitors and purchases, for example.

Robert also points to catch-up TV like the BBC's iPlayer or the ABC's iView, as well as their emerging commercial counterparts, as important new vehicles for the future of television advertising - so, far from combatting the proliferation of TV content beyond the television, advertisers should embrace it and the opportunities it brings. If the content is right, television advertising will be successful - even beyond TV.

And that's it for me - I'm off to catch the plane back to Brisbane. Good conference, and some interesting insights into the industry...

Technorati : AM&BC2008, advertising, streaming media, television
Del.icio.us : AM&BC2008, advertising, streaming media, television