43 ROUND TABLE Audience Engagement
RICHARD BRANDON: It’s taken the industry a while to put together all the moving parts required for a good personalised ad solution – user profiling, ad decision systems, ad stitching – but it’s really starting to happen now. Going forward there are still a few things to iron out, not least quality. Viewers and advertisers expect to see their ads at the same quality as the programme they are next to. Smart, ‘ad- aware’ OTT technologies such as frame accurate segmentation, for example, will be important to ensure that ads start and stop precisely when they are supposed to. High-quality ad-stitching will ensure resolution and screen formats match the original show. And TV optimised CDNs will ensure they are delivered from as near to the viewer as possible. JOHANNES JAUCH: With new technologies available, hyper-targeting customers is becoming the norm. Ad revenues and spending are already shifting from TV to OTT, with one of the benefits being the ability to much better
target the audience, based on metrics that have not been available before. We are already in a mobile-first world. But this is just the beginning. New mobile devices with 5G connections and the advent of 5G networks will continue to bring the cost of mobile data transfer down. We have seen the advent of mobile data flat rates, but this trend will continue, and prices will fall, further fuelling the change in viewing behaviour of consumers towards more mobile consumption. YOUPETS: The CEO has just returned from a trade show where he heard a speaker say the advertising model is dying. Should we be worried? Should we change strategies? MARK BLAIR: Some of my friends in Asia, in long-form, mainstream content, were just saying they’re looking to pivot away from paid towards advertising. I think it’s about seeing what works with the audience and content that you’ve got. Whether it’s that tiered strategy
of free-freemium-paid or if you decide you’ve got scale and go with paid. It comes down to looking at your content and audience and fine-tuning it over time. It’s a journey. But I don’t think that advertising as a model is going to die. RICHARD BRANDON: Absolutely not. Advertising revenues have indeed shifted away from TV to digital platforms over recent years – but the ability to target OTT viewers with personalised ads means that TV ads can beat the digital platforms at their own game. Customers of ours that offer both broadcast and OTT ads are finding they can sell the OTT ads at a substantial premium. JOHANNES JAUCH: This topic keeps coming up and it’s mostly about the ‘death of TV advertising’ which is greatly exaggerated. The art of advertising is changing and it is all to do with making use of all data available and presenting the right ad in the right context to the viewer. According to eMarketer the addressable TV ad spending in the US is growing tremendously, with a 40% increase expected from 2018 to 2019. Admittedly, the growth rate is shrinking, but it’s not quite like the advertising model is dying anytime soon. ADAM NIGHTINGALE: No, but keep an open mind and experiment. You can use a hybrid model, where some content is behind a pay wall but other content is available on an ad-funded basis.
WITH NEW TECHNOLOGIES AVAILABLE, HYPER-TARGETING CUSTOMERS IS QUICKLY BECOMING THE NORM
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