Five Priorities for the Future of TV Advertising in Europe

The TV indus­try is in the midst of rapid change. The devices used for media con­sump­tion are shift­ing from the tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion set to mobile and dig­i­tal, while lin­ear broad­cast chan­nels are giv­ing way to the likes of OTT play­ers such as Now TV, Net­flix and Ama­zon Prime.

While incum­bent media own­ers are launch­ing their own sub­scrip­tion-based dig­i­tal chan­nels in response – from ITV and BBC’s Net­flix stream­ing rival, Brit­box, or Chan­nel 4’s revamped, ad-free All 4 ser­vice – adver­tis­ing will remain essen­tial for tra­di­tion­al broad­cast if it is to remain the dom­i­nant chan­nel for con­tent consumption.

How­ev­er, as video chan­nels frag­ment, and adver­tis­ers shift exclu­sive­ly from lin­ear TV to mul­ti­plat­form, they are encoun­ter­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in mea­sur­ing and eval­u­at­ing the per­for­mance of their con­tent across chan­nels. It’s a prob­lem that the TV indus­try across Europe must address – if the per­for­mance of TV ads can’t be bench­marked against the wider dig­i­tal chan­nels that adver­tis­ers are increas­ing­ly using, broad­cast­ers risk los­ing essen­tial ad revenue.

To tack­le this issue head on, here at Adobe we part­nered with TV indus­try heavy weights Sky, TVBeat, Alphon­so and MTM, and formed a TV Con­sor­tium in May 2018. In the last year, we’ve spo­ken with over 300 TV indus­try exec­u­tives across Europe through a series of round­table events, and have gained their insights on the cur­rent state of the indus­try across Europe, as well as what the future holds.

Our key takes from these dis­cus­sions? Today’s TV oper­at­ing mod­el doesn’t place adver­tis­er needs front and cen­tre, and with­out com­mon met­rics for ad viewa­bil­i­ty, brands can’t offer the best expe­ri­ence across mul­ti­ple channels.

In fact, of those we spoke to, nine in 10 of the TV indus­try exec­u­tives called for urgent change, stat­ing that new ini­tia­tives for TV adver­tis­ing mea­sure­ment, data and met­rics are urgent­ly need­ed if the Euro­pean TV indus­try is to remain competitive.

Three quar­ters also (72%) stat­ed that that the indus­try must seek new def­i­n­i­tions and com­mon prin­ci­ples for ad viewa­bil­i­ty, and a fur­ther two-thirds (64%) believe stan­dard­ised def­i­n­i­tions for TV and video impres­sions must be developed.

In response to these find­ings and to help the TV indus­try in Europe remain com­pet­i­tive and offer more con­sis­tent expe­ri­ences across chan­nels, the TV Con­sor­tium has iden­ti­fied five key pri­or­i­ties to take them there. These include:

  1. Ensure that TV Audi­ence Mea­sure­ment (TAM) solu­tions remain the gold stan­dard in media measurement
  2. Sup­port the devel­op­ment of scal­able, con­sis­tent pan-indus­try stan­dards, def­i­n­i­tions and solutions
  3. Devel­op the indus­try-wide data assets and capa­bil­i­ties required to cater to new adver­tis­er needs
  4. Main­tain TV’s sta­tus as a brand-safe, ful­ly view­able, and effec­tive adver­tis­ing medi­um – com­mit­ting to clear principles
  5. Invest in train­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of data sci­en­tists to meet TV’s needs

Togeth­er with Sky, Alphon­so, TVBeat and MTM, we believe it’s essen­tial that the TV indus­try across the entire ad sup­ply chain works togeth­er to address these pri­or­i­ties, so as to main­tain TV’s posi­tion as the dom­i­nant chan­nel for con­tent, and adver­tis­ing consumption.

On our part, we’ve launched a full report – _‘Next Gen­er­a­tion TV Met­rics and Data Strate­gies: Pri­or­i­ties for the Euro­pean TV Indus­try’ – _which explore these pri­or­i­ties in fur­ther detail and offer a roadmap for the industry’s future. You can down­load the full report here.

And it’s no coin­ci­dence that the report has been launched dur­ing Ad Week Europe 2019. We’ll be on the ground through­out Adver­tis­ing Week to dis­cuss the TV industry’s future in more depth, as well as tak­ing part in wider pan­els on 2019’s biggest adver­tis­ing trends.

We hope to see you at the show and stay tuned for more updates from the TV Con­sor­tium in months to come. For more info on what we’re doing at Adver­tis­ing Week, click here.