Consortium Report on TV Measurement and Personalisation

For more than 80 years, Euro­pean tele­vi­sion has been unit­ing peo­ple in their con­sump­tion of content—reaching them in their liv­ing rooms, bed­rooms, and pub and sports bars. And for over 60 years of that time, adver­tis­ing rev­enue fund­ed broad­cast­ers, help­ing them cre­ate con­tent that had us glued to TV screens.

Times are chang­ing. The indus­try must adapt in order to main­tain rel­e­vance in this era of mul­ti-device, mul­ti-plat­form con­tent con­sump­tion. The days when pan­el-based mea­sure­ment and lin­ear tele­vi­sion rat­ing mon­i­tors revealed view­ing fig­ures in the mul­ti-mil­lions are over. Today’s con­sumer is no longer in a monog­a­mous rela­tion­ship with lin­ear TV. We all enjoy con­tent on our phones, lap­tops and iPads, at home or on the go, at a time of our choosing.

Detrac­tors claim that the “death of tele­vi­sion” is immi­nent. At Adobe we say this is far from the case—we sim­ply need to devel­op new ways to mea­sure con­tent con­sump­tion across devices in order to inform and empow­er adver­tis­ers eager to effec­tive­ly and trans­par­ent­ly tar­get today’s con­sumer. That’s why, six weeks ago, we joined the lead­ing research and strat­e­gy con­sul­tan­cy, MTM, and a group of TV indus­try pow­er play­ers cov­er­ing broad­cast (Sky), data (TVbeat) and ana­lyt­ics (Alphon­so) to form a con­sor­tium designed to explore TV mea­sure­ment and per­son­al­i­sa­tion needs in Europe.

The con­sor­tium has been busy hit­ting five mar­kets (UK, France, Ger­many, Italy and Benelux), con­duct­ing research into the chal­lenges fac­ing the indus­try. Over 150 exec­u­tives rep­re­sent­ing such indus­try lead­ers such as BT, the BBC, Deutsche Tele­com, Canal+, RTL, Medi­a­com, OMD and Nielsen, were inter­viewed, with top line find­ings revealed today in a ses­sion giv­en at Adobe Sum­mit.

Tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing is an almost €20B annu­al indus­try across the five mar­kets vis­it­ed by the con­sor­tium. Despite this, since 2010 the UK has expe­ri­enced a 9 per­cent drop in dai­ly TV view­ing num­bers on lin­ear TV sets. The Nether­lands and Italy fol­low with a 6 per­cent and 5 per­cent drop respec­tive­ly. This peri­od of sig­nif­i­cant change is due to pres­sure exert­ed by new entrants, the dra­mat­ic growth of mul­ti-plat­form view­ing and chang­ing buy-side expec­ta­tions and needs. Adapt­ing to these changes is an indus­try wide busi­ness pri­or­i­ty, nec­es­sary to main­tain mar­ket share and relevance.

The con­sor­tium found that TV exec­u­tives across the con­ti­nent agree about the need for new audi­ence data ini­tia­tives and met­rics, and we’ve dis­cov­ered that new TV audi­ence mea­sure­ment solu­tions are in var­i­ous stages of devel­op­ment across Europe. Accord­ing to MTM, the 150 par­tic­i­pants gave an aver­age score of 7.84 on a 1–10 scale (where 1 = dis­agree strong­ly and 10 = agree strong­ly) when respond­ing to the state­ment: “Our TV indus­try needs to devel­op new audi­ence data ini­tia­tives and met­rics if it is to remain com­pet­i­tive and grow over the next 3–5 years.”

Jon Watts, co-founder and direc­tor of MTM Lon­don says: “The TV indus­try across Europe is expe­ri­enc­ing a peri­od of dra­mat­ic change, as TV view­ing becomes more wide­ly dis­trib­uted and frag­ment­ed and bar­ri­ers to entry fall. Data-aug­ment­ed video buy­ing is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty and scale​. The indus­try is adapt­ing well to these changes, with TV audi­ence mea­sure­ment improv­ing across Europe, but there’s a strong con­sen­sus across most Euro­pean mar­kets that more is need­ed. Broad­cast­ers increas­ing­ly need to lever­age data to sup­port and grow their busi­ness­es, devel­op­ing new prod­ucts, sup­port­ing improved tar­get­ing, and using data and mar­ket­ing ana­lyt­ics to grow their mul­ti-plat­form TV prod­ucts. We’re con­fi­dent that the indus­try will change with the times – but there’s clear­ly a lot to do.”

​The Con­sor­tium iden­ti­fied five key pri­or­i­ties for the TV industry​ dur­ing the road­show includ­ing the devel­op­ment of:

1. Com­mon adver­tis­ing seg­ments and tar­get­ing attrib­ut­es across dif­fer­ent pools of TV/broadcaster ad inven­to­ry, to deliv­er scale to marketers.
2. TV audi­ence data pro­vid­ing com­pre­hen­sive and inde­pen­dent­ly-ver­i­fied consumption​ pat­terns
3. New data sets and met­rics (and asso­ci­at­ed prod­ucts) to help bring new adver­tis­ers to TV for exam­ple SMEs, region­al and per­for­mance advertisers
4. Principles/methods for uni­fied ad effec­tive­ness mea­sure­ment, ensur­ing com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty between dif­fer­ent stud­ies, and joint­ly devel­op ad attri­bu­tion tools.
5. New met­rics and prin­ci­ples in areas such as viewa­bil­i­ty (e.g. 100 per­cent viewa­bil­i­ty for the full dura­tion of the video) and brand safe­ty (e.g. ad shown in a media-own­er curat­ed envi­ron­ment) to high­light TV’s unique qual­i­ty and value.

“In this new world, it’s clear to every­one that expe­ri­ences mat­ter more than ever,” said Phillip Duffield, EMEA MD of Adobe Adver­tis­ing Cloud. “Expe­ri­ences are how you break through the noise and make a last­ing impact. Audi­ences have more con­trol and choice than they ever had when it comes to TV and mar­keters are chal­lenged to evolve the way they con­nect with their consumers.

“To suc­cess­ful­ly con­tin­ue to use the amaz­ing pow­er of TV to reach con­sumers, it can’t be about more, it has to be about bet­ter —bet­ter, more rel­e­vant expe­ri­ences across the entire TV experience.”

Find out more about the Consortium’s work here.

For fur­ther details about the con­sor­tium, go to http://www.mtmlondon.com/. ​