Analysis

The one-day virtual Connected TV World Summit agenda for Wednesday March 18 has been published and includes insights about the control versus reach trade-offs associated with aggregation, whether the economics still work for commercial broadcasting and large international streaming services, and how we unify linear and digital advertising. The live stream is free to all delegates.

NBCUniversal has officially launched One Platform, where linear and digital audiences are treated as a single pool of consumers. Advertisers can buy classic linear TV audiences, buy cross-platform against Nielsen demos, or create audience-based and custom segments to reach on all screens. Planning a sophisticated, multi-strategy and multiplatform campaign becomes a simple step for planners. The capabilities contained in One Platform represent a giant leap for television.

UKTV is one of the UK’s most important channel groups, taking an 8% share of commercial impacts for adult viewers across a portfolio of seven popular free and pay channels. Its focus on originals is already paying dividends, attracting big audiences and boosting its reputation with brand advertisers and creative talent. Represented by 4Sales, which has signed a deal to use Sky AdSmart for linear addressable, UKTV wants to be first on the list to explore the possibilities.

The conversation around addressable TV technology is already turning away from the technology to how we make it work commercially for every stakeholder, with a particular interest in the operator-broadcaster relationship. This observation comes from Thomas Bremond, GM, International at FreeWheel, who joined Sky in calling for more standardisation of how addressable TV is implemented in different European markets. The next steps in addressable are becoming clear.

The shortlists for the Videonet Connected TV Awards 2020 have just been announced. The awards, organised by Videonet magazine, showcase stand-out innovation and leadership across the TV industry and the shortlisted candidates cover streaming video, advertising technology, data analytics and the user experience, among other things.

There were seven big takeaways from Future of TV Advertising Global, the world’s No.1 thought-leadership event for TV advertising strategy and technology. They are: Television is back on the offensive; It’s not a question of if you follow the 60:40 rule, just how you implement it; Addressable TV is coming fast, complementing rather than replacing ‘national’ ads; Unification of broadcast and digital is everything; TV is an activation medium, which makes it a uniquely full-funnel offering; The real magic is data-driven, audience-based buying; Yes, agencies do have a future.

As part of its HERO Program, Technicolor has pre-integrated the Hoppr addressable advertising application onto its Android TV set-top boxes, and the solution is ready to roll with network service providers. The managed service does not require the operator to invest in ad-tech or ad sales. The inventory is created within the navigation menus the operator controls. When it comes to finding new operator revenue streams, this is viewed as low-hanging fruit.

Future of TV Global has it all – top-level marketing theory, implementation strategy and the ad-tech details. This two-day knowledge-hit includes Les Binet discussing brand and activation budgeting in the digital age and adidas revealing why it is reducing the use of short-term metrics. The London conference explores the emerging market for non-broadcaster ad-supported streaming, TV as an activation medium, and how TV can better serve digital-first brands. Theories about how brands grow are tested, and there are sessions dedicated to addressable TV in Europe and the power of broadcast industry collaboration.

Eluvio has created a distribution network that ingests content and then decomposes it into its most basic elements like binary data, metadata and programming code, then reconstitutes these elements into video streams at the edge. This solution can be used by production companies, like when delivering master files, but as a disruptive technology its greatest impact could be when distributing video direct to consumers, where it has the potential, on paper, to supersede CDNs. For ABR distribution the new architecture effectively builds streams at the edge, on demand and just-in-time, from the constituent parts – avoiding the need for network file storage and duplication.

The Smart Media Device is a new category of gateway with set-top box functions plus a voice assistant (possibly more than one) that uses a built-in far-field microphone and speaker. With this platform situated in popular rooms, service providers can impress consumers with ‘skills’ like telling them their Wi-Fi password. There are new value-add opportunities – like enabling ‘Ageing in place’ services. The SMD can harness the television set for visual feedback. When it comes to delivering smart home services, this device could overtake computers and tablets in terms of ease of use.