Media

Terrestrial television has been copping plenty of grief on its audience losses but Seven West Media’s national sales boss put some heat back on brand owners last week, challenging them to break old-world habits that are often levelled at TV networks. “You would be surprised how many brands don’t allow their agencies to deliver audiences across BVOD where the eyeballs are,” Natalie Harvey told the Future of TV Advertising conference last week. VOZ, she said, is no magic bullet.

The once united front from broadcasters on a single ‘gold standard’ TV and video measurement system via OzTAM appears to be breaking down – Nine told YouTube at the Future of TV forum last week it was welcome to join OzTAM if it played on the same terms as broadcasters; YouTube all but ruled that out as Foxtel Media made clear overtures it would move ahead of its broadcast frenemies by adopting digital measurement – impressions – across its streaming channels and its million set-top box subscribers. Vevo, meanwhile, with a global footprint in digital and terrestrial TV, said adopting multiple audience currencies is inevitable. 

Australia's $3bn free-to-air TV business remains “stubbornly resistant” to global TV forces which have already switched the delivery, dollars and dominance of broadcast TV to digital video in the US and UK markets. Video ad revenues on IP screens and devices abroad are now larger than the once-untouchable terrestrial and pay-TV ad markets. But hold out as they might, Australian terrestrial broadcasters are set to lose their decades-long ascendency in the ad-funded media market. By 2027 the tipping point lands here: streamed digital video will be bigger than the killer advertising channel of all time, free-to-air TV, according to the LA-based executive director of Ampere Analysis, Guy Bisson. The timeline was all but backed by Nine’s Chief Sales Officer Michael Stephenson at the Future of TV Advertising forum last week in Sydney as new research on the profile of Netflix ad tier subscribers suggests there's more duplication with online broadcaster audiences than some might hope.      

Foxtel Media chief Mark Frain says user experience is the new battleground for TV companies pushing harder into streaming – and reckons advertisers will pay a premium for higher attention. Ad loads on Binge won't go beyond four minutes per hour, he told the future of TV. Nine's Michael Stephenson says the network could reduce ad loads, currently set to eight minutes per hour maximum for BVOD, but advertisers would have to pay more to balance the books. Agencies are open to paying more for higher attention, if networks can guarantee better business results – but warn it cuts both ways: TV companies seeking rate rises and attention premiums would have to drop rates elsewhere.

A month after P&G’s Global Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard outlined the consumer goods giant’s increasing focus on reaching 90-100 per cent of a given target audience for its ad campaigns, Amplified Intelligence’s Karen Nelson-Field released new analysis at the Future of TV Advertising forum in Sydney yesterday showing the marked decay in consumer attention between scrollable and non-scrollable media platforms. Ultimately it undermines the ‘theoretical’ assumptions made by advertisers, agencies and media in their audience reach planning. 

FAST TV is booming in the US and Australia, where locally there are already 389 free ad-supported TV channels and where the market is likely to grow to $300m within four years, according to Variety VIP intelligence chief Gavin Bridge. He told the Future of TV Advertising conference that it's easy cash, because audiences want curation and are happy to watch recycled shows – and urged networks and CTV operators not to leave money on the table.

Media buyers at two of the world's largest holding companies warn streaming platforms pushing into local ad-funded models must consider how to quickly scale, sell and deliver better data or risk losing early market commitment and price premiums – upwards of 50 per cent on BVOD CPMs – and a slice of the $300m forecast to leak out of free-to-air TV this year. But they said the emergence of ad-funded streaming platforms provides a chance to prove the theory that advertisers are willing to pay more for lower ad loads. "We're about to find out," per OMG investment chief Kristiaan Kroon.

Advertisers with big TV budgets say linear TV’s audience slump is flooding screens with audience makegoods that are spilling to BVOD services to deliver viewing numbers – “there’s no show hitting anywhere near the numbers that were proposed,” one CMO at a large TV spender told Mi3 in the lead-up to today’s sold-out Future of TV Advertising forum in Sydney. But media agencies warn the forecast $300m-plus that will exit the linear TV ad market this year is facing some challenges on where those budgets are re-allocated – Carat Chief Investment Officer Craig Cooper said “unfortunately we’re probably over-indexed in YouTube because it’s getting more and more difficult to reach the younger end.”