Advertising

RTL AdConnect combines everything a future-facing broadcaster initiative should in the battle for international campaign budgets. It gives brands access to TV, broadcaster VOD, MCN and other digital inventory across 12 territories. It brings four non-RTL broadcast groups into something close to an alliance. It exploits local market expertise to deliver a ‘glocal’ solution. There are media modelling, planning and reporting services. There is one entry point for the buy, and the opportunity to use bespoke creative solutions.

Australia is one of the most pro-digital advertising markets on earth, linear TV ratings are noticeably down and online broadcaster viewing is not measured. Some advertising budget has begun moving out of TV. The television industry knows it must become more automated, more data-driven, better at proving its own value, and probably more collaborative. Future TV Advertising Forum Sydney was a chance to outline the priorities for change and to gauge whether the mood of buyers is shifting, given concerns about digital effectiveness elsewhere. Here is an outline of what we learned.

Unilever has threatened to withdraw advertising from online platforms unless they can guarantee editorial standards. CMO Keith Weed said “We cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency.” Analysts at Liberum see an opportunity for broadcasters – namely ITV in the UK - to take a bigger slice of the online video advertising market.

Sport1 overlayed IP-delivered ads into broadcast signals in 2015, without fully substituting them, as an interactive ‘wrap-around’. ProSiebenSat takes a similar approach with its SwitchIn product. Last year RTL fully replaced ads inside the broadcast signal with ads that were delivered over IP, as a proof-of-concept. Now the DVB is using this approach as the basis for its future linear addressable advertising standard for the broadcast market.

The French TV industry has been lobbying the government to reform the regulation that prevents household targeting in linear television, and it is hoped that addressable [linear] advertising could get the green light this year. In anticipation, Orange and CANAL+ have been getting ready – first with catch-up trials and now with linear IPTV that uses a smart multicast-to-unicast ‘tuning’ application for ad insertion.

After studying whether the DTT broadcast market needs addressable TV advertising, the DVB has concluded that it does – and will be put at risk without it. The new Targeted Advertising standards initiative is designed to deliver a broadcaster-friendly technical framework that puts them in control of their own destiny, with the work of HbbTV at the heart of it.

Live/linear TV still has huge value to advertisers as it delivers mass concurrent viewership at a time when audiences are becoming more fragmented. Born-online media firms can see the attraction, and are increasingly interested in sports. To keep their dominant position, broadcasters need to maximise the value of their online distribution. Dynamic ad insertion is one solution, but it must be combined with better user experiences.

Since hitting an AVOD market share low in 2016, the Swedish broadcast group has bounced back and digital viewing is now driving overall revenue growth and profit. The company is confident that a combination of great content, transparent trading and reporting, and careful use of first-party data gives it an advertising advantage over born-online rivals. Now the broadcaster wants to move as much of its inventory as possible from linear into digital.

The company behind Guinness and Baileys is worried about brand-safety, digital transparency, the effectiveness of media spend and the impact that the wrong media choices could have on brands that took hundreds of years to build. Its new ‘trusted marketplace’ requirements stipulate strict brand protection, transparent pricing models and minimum viewability, among other things.

The German broadcaster achieved 27% incremental reach during one campaign for BMW, using a targeted ad insertion solution that delivers static graphical ads via IP that then overlay all or part of the broadcast signal when viewers change channel. The ‘SwitchIn’ product is now the highest priced inventory that ProSiebenSat.1 owns.