Category Archives: TV

[Guest Post] YuMe on Mobile Video Advertising Technology

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May 17, 2012

Smartphone penetration is currently at 53% compared to last March when it was recorded at 39%. This resulted in smartphone penetration growth of 24% over the last 14 months. People are now spending on average of 84 minutes a day on their phone and are no longer just texting and calling. There is a whole new wave of activity around people watching video and using social media and mobile applications, which presents new opportunities for customer engagement and understanding. Research from a recent Nielson study suggests that people are now viewing more video on their Mobile/Tablet device compared to PC on a monthly basis.  Looking at a study of what people are doing whilst they are on their phone or tablet it was found that TV and being in bed indexes high.

 YuMe Logo

YuMe is a Video advertising network; the largest pure play video network in the US across Connected television, Online and Mobile. They are currently achieving 2 billion impressions a month and some of their publishers include MSN, FOX News and CNN. YuMe broke into the European Marketplace through an acquisition of a company called Appealing Media, that has been established for 2 years and specialize in Mobile Pre Roll Video. YuMe’s Current reach is 1 billion display impressions across Europe and 30 million Videos. In the UK the current reach is 500 million display impressions and 20 million Videos. Some of YuMe’s Publishers include Top Gear, ITN, ESPN, GOAL.com and Shazam. YuMe have just moved into the Connected TV audience in the UK becoming Samsung’s exclusive Partner and having inventory on LG smart TVs achieving 5 million banner to video impressions a month.

 

YuMe has the largest offering of Mobile Ad Formats available through any mobile network; from the Market leading Interactive Pre Roll to Banner to Video and everything from Rich Media Expandable Banner.  We specialize in video advertising across three screens, Mobile, Online and Connected TV.  YuMe’s network runs multiple ad formats in the same content environments, delivering a 70% unique network across publishers like Top Gear, ESPN, ITN, Bauer and IPC (over 125 publishers in the YuMe Network).

 

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Smart TV’s – The Potential is There But Adoption is Slow

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May 15, 2012

We have been told that 2012 is the year of internet enabled TVs. However, recent statistics from Kantar Media have shown that fewer than 10% of TV owners have actually used their TV to go online. It’s surprising – and disappointing – that despite the excitement around smart TVs, viewers are not using them to their full potential. The traditional functionality of TVs, such as a large screen, crisp image and so on, is still the driving factor behind use of the devices.

 Samsung Smart TV Logo

These figures prove that there’s still a sizeable job to do when it comes to educating consumers about smart TVs. Of course, it’s not that viewers aren’t interested in the additional functions their TV set can now offer, and the fact they now have complete control over what they watch, when they want to watch it. It’s just that, in most cases, they don’t know that these options are now available to them, or assume they will be too complicated to use.

 

Agencies are looking to test highly targeted advertising based on users’ viewing patterns – and connected TVs have huge potential for real time, personalised and creative messaging. However, if users aren’t using the devices while connected online then it could be a false start for advertising opportunities in this new arena. We are confident that consumers will get there eventually, but it does appear that mass adoption of internet enabled TVs could be slower than predicted.

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ITV – Buy TV?

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May 11, 2012

There were some interesting financial results from ITV this week.

ITV Site

An interim management statement announced healthy results from the broadcaster for Q1 2012, and led to a share price jump of 2% – maybe more of a shuffle forward  than a giant leap, but a good result nonetheless.  Revenues in total were up 13% and Chief Exec Adam Crozier’s statement confidently talked up the remainder of the year.

 

There is no doubt that ITV is expecting great things from Euro 2012.  Their statement claimed that June spot ad revenues are expected to be up between 12 and 17 per cent.  This is curious for two reasons.  One is that the official booking deadline for June was early in April, and so they should already know the June revenue figure to a reasonably accurate degree.  The other is that they have surely heard of Roy Hodgson.

 

But what’s interesting is the way that ITV has diversified revenue streams. Traditional spot advertising revenue in Q1 was down 1% to £362Million, while income from other sources – production, licensing, online and sponsorship was up 43% and accounted for some 44% of total revenue.  Successes from the production team – such as Titanic and Downton Abbey – have contributed, as has the increase in ad spend online and VOD.

 

The ongoing delays for You View will be costly to ITV.  And previous forays into the digital world such as the ill-fated and poorly-timed purchase of Friends Reunited were not great business successes.  But the new management team is making some interesting and innovative decisions.

 

Initiatives such as the newly launched Shazam-enabled ad breaks are a testament to the investment ITV is making in new technology and also a demonstration of their ability to capitalise on the phenomenal growth in dual screening.  Their sponsorship team is working hard to find a new Coronation St sponsor to replace Harvey’s – as Coro remains the biggest TV sponsorship property in the UK.

 

As the market leader operating in a heavily-regulated environment, ITV’s traditional advertising revenue will always mirror total TV ad spend, something that the broadcaster can have little or no influence over.  So the strategy of diversifying revenue and the focus on non-spot revenue is a sound one.  And good results from ITV lead to bigger production budgets for the future – so all in all this is good news for advertisers.

 

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Lord Sugar’s YouView will miss the Olympics

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May 8, 2012

Once again, the YouView launch has been delayed. The much anticipated Spring date now looks likely to be the last quarter of 2012. It was supposed to be cutting edge technology, the evolution of Freeview that delivered a significant blow to BSkyB. It’s now so late that connected TVs are making it look obsolete before it’s even started.

 YouView Delayed Again

This delay might not affect you, but you should be reminded of the relevance of connected TVs and how the TV ecosystem is changing incredibly rapidly. Businesses need to be on the ball when it comes to the significant technological advances that are shaping the broadcast industry.

 

YouView blazed on to our screens in 2010, promising to do for every broadcaster what the iPlayer has done for the BBC. However, it’s been revealed that the set-top box business, led by Lord Sugar, will not be fully up and running until the end of 2012.

 

The joint venture between BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, TalkTalk, BT and Arquiva has been plagued by delays since its inception. The partners thought they were on safe ground the last time they revised its launch date to this Spring, insisting the important thing was to hit the high street before the London Olympics. However, the roll-out of the service, which enables users to watch programmes on-demand on their televisions, is still facing technical problems and has been delayed again until at least the fourth quarter of this year.

 

A senior source told The Sunday Telegraph that Lord Sugar did not think the project was in a good enough shape to show to the public. According to documents filed at Companies House, YouView spent more than £20m in its first nine months to April last year, although the inside scoop from well-placed sources is that spend has actually exceeded £100m.

 

When the set-top box does launch properly, it will have a battle on its hands to win over the public. It faces a narrowing window within which to win customer loyalty amongst increasing competition – such as Freeview, the long-established digital service, which is now allowing users to scroll backwards through their menu of programmes to ones they had missed, a service which competes directly with YouView.

 

And, the fact that Lord Sugar fired YouView’s entire marketing and press team last autumn is hardly going to assist with an all-singing-all-dancing consumer launch. YouView has a lot to do to live up to the hype – and it is running out of time to make any kind of significant impact on the on-demand market.

 

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BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT BUT IS IT LOSING IT’S VOICE?

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April 13, 2012

Britain's Got Talent

With all its glitz and glamour, the spring TV programming schedule is upon us once again.  We’ve seen the return of seasonal favourites such as ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent and the commission of new shows such as Channel 4’s Homeland and BBC’s The Voice.  There have also been a few shows upping sticks and finding new homes. All of this activity has made for interesting ratings battles.

The most publicised of these battles has been between the The Voice and Britain’s Got Talent.  ITV’s decision to pull the scheduled start date of the first episode of BGT a week forward to create a direct twenty minute ‘clash’ between the two shows only acted as a catalyst to the intensity of the ratings battle.

The first skirmish on the 24th March saw BGT pip its rival to the post with an average 10.6m viewers (inc. +1) against The Voice’s 9.4m.  However, in the brief 20 minute overlap, The Voice averaged 9.9m with BGT at just 7.5m.  The second weekend saw similar results. However, on the 7th April The Voice averaged 9.54m viewers versus BGT’s 9.1m (rising to 9.36m when +1 is included).  These figures have certainly been noticed by ITV who is re-scheduling BGT from the 21st April to start at 8.30pm to prevent any viewer loss to the BBC.  Victory for the Beeb!

ITV and Channel 4 have seen contrasted levels of success with their spring offerings.  Backed by the ITV publicity machine, the Titanic four part mini-series was commissioned to celebrate/commiserate the 100th anniversary of the disaster and hoped to attract similar viewing figures as Downton Abbey, Julian Fellows’ previous work.  The show launched on 25th March with 7.6m viewers but quickly slipped down to 5.2m in the second episode – and last Sunday’s episode figures slipped to just 3.1m. Poor Titanic – these sinking figures seems to be a case of art imitating life. In contrast, Channel 4’s US acquisition Homeland has been a resounding success, consistently delivering audiences between 3.1m – 3.3m (inc. +1).  More importantly, it is delivering in the key demographic of ABC1Ads averaging 7-8 TVRs.

The Voice

There has also been a scheduling spring clean in recent weeks.  The most prolific of these was Mad Men’s season five launch on Sky Atlantic, which was viewed by only 209,000 individuals – disappointing when you consider the season four launch on BBC4 averaged over 344,000 in September 2010. Over on terrestrial, Sunday morning magazine show Something For The Weekend, has renamed itself Sunday Brunch and moved to Channel 4 from BBC2.  Again, viewing figures have declined, with the show’s previous average of just over 1m individuals down to just under 700,000 on Channel 4.

With spring schedules now well and truly underway and providing us with some interesting rivalries and surprising victories, What’s Hot is already looking forward to the summer season. Let the battles commence!

 

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Anything Good on the Box?

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March 16, 2012

Forget the year of mobile – 2012 is the year of data or internet enabled TVs, and media land is abuzz with discussions on dual screening and, specifically, one name – Zeebox.  Sky Media’s acquisition of a 10% stake in Zeebox following its launch last November, as well as the current TV campaign (unsurprisingly running across Sky owned channels) has propelled Zeebox into the mainstream.   

Zeebox offers users an amplified TV viewing experience, by not competing with linear TV, but by complementing the experience.  The app appears in the form of an interactive guide, which allows users to express their sentiment towards programmes they are watching, and then sharing this across the social sphere through Facebook and Twitter.

The significance of Sky’s involvement is that they are embedding Zeebox technology across Sky+, and Sky Go is allowing advertising opportunities around Zeebox apps, evolving it from a purely peer-to-peer social product.  Sky hasn’t yet formally laid out these opportunities, but it is initially looking for launch partners, which will lead to further commercial opportunities. These include the potential for sponsored Zeetags – similar to Twitter trends, and also the opportunity to click to buy products which appear in the programme the user is watching live.  The true test for Sky will be harnessing the consumer interest around Zeebox and then turning this into a true commercial opportunity – a problem even the social behemoths of both Twitter and Facebook are still struggling to fully resolve.

The relationship of dual screening and social media’s influence on linear TV is evident in the announcement of Channel 4’s new 4Seven channel.  It is essentially a catch-up service with scheduling defined by the social buzz around shows aired within the previous week, which are then repeated on 4Seven.  This is, in effect, reversing the trend of on demand TV and allowing consumers the choice of what they would like to collectively watch within the linear format.  This example re-enforces the importance of the first screen in any dual screen debate.

The TV is dead.  Long live the TV!

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Another Day

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February 10, 2012

On Sunday 5th February, What’s Hot was one of the 111.3m viewers who tuned in to watch this year’s Super Bowl final. For the third consecutive year, it attracted the largest audience of a TV programme in US history. At a price tag of $3.5m for a 30 second spot, it is the definition of primetime viewing. With the rise and rise of dual-screening, this year advertisers pulled out all the stops to make sure that, regardless of the platform, they had the viewers’ attention.

Ever since Apple’s iconic ‘1984’ ad, which introduced the Macintosh personal computer for the first time, the Super Bowl ads have become an integral part of the whole extravaganza. Hulu, an American online TV streaming platform, jumped on board this year and partnered with Advertising Age and Toyota to bring viewers the ‘ultimate viewing experience’.  The Hulu Adzone Player allowed viewers to watch the ads in real time as they aired on TV, to vote for their favourite ads and share the clips across social media. Thanks to Hulu, the ads instantly took on another level of engagement.

Coca Cola also embraced engagement by creating entertaining content that ran online throughout the evening, and nicely complemented their spot airtime ads. During the game, two of the brand’s legendary polar bears were decked out in team colours – one in a New York Giants’ blue scarf and one in a New England Patriots’ red scarf. Viewers who logged on to the Coca Cola site could watch the bears react in real time to the match (e.g. celebrating when someone scored) and could follow the bears commenting on Twitter and ask them questions.

Users were prompted to engage with brands featured during the ad breaks – 68% of the ads shown had references to websites and social media sites. As viewers of sporting events tend to be passive, the challenge is how do you convince them to interact with an ad? Simple answer: free stuff. Between Shazam and QR codes, goodies up for grabs ranged from two Camrys from Toyota, $50 off a new phone in Best Buy, and exclusive content from Madonna for the half-time show.

And the results? This year’s Super Bowl attracted 12.2m social media comments during and immediately after it – a 578% increase on last year, making it the biggest social media event recorded in the US. Tweets spiked at 10,000 per second. People weren’t just watching – they were interacting.

Looking forward to Superbowl 2013, it would seem that the lesson to learn from this is to keep your eyes on your screens – all of them.

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I’ll Be There

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December 2, 2011

Gone are the days of trading standard TV audiences. …well potentially.  Virgin media has created a storm in the TV world by announcing the forthcoming launch of a targeted TV ad service.

The proposed service would allow ads across all the Virgin Media platforms (including Tivo) to be targeted to individual households, using customer information such as location, age and viewing packages. This would help advertisers to select who to show their ads to from Virgin Medias’ 3.8 million TV customers.

The new service means that different people watching the same content will be served different ads depending on their personal information. The service has recently been trialled across the Tivo platform and will launch in the third quarter of 2012 solely within Virgin Media’s  TV and video on demand content for starters.

The service would be a competitor to Sky’s current Adsmart service, which works in a similar way. Applying these ads to linear (essentially, ‘normal’) TV is a mechanic that Sky has been discussing for a while. It has not yet revealed a date for the release but is not expected until 2013, a big incentive for Virgin to get a move on. Sky’s current Adsmart service is available through Sky Player, a platform that was released in March 2010 with Sky Go.

Sky’s system works because it has developed, and fully owns ‘Sky IQ’ – its customer intelligence service. This gives it access to its own data set to assist with the segmentation of its audience for advertisers.

Virgins proposed roll out of targeted TV ads comes at a time when the digital industry faces an inquiry over consumer privacy and how customer information is used online and spread across other platforms. Virgin has also stressed that the intelligent use of data is a huge part of its  strategy moving forward and said that will eventually be able to offer an ad targeted addressable solution across all platforms.

Currently advertisers cannot even target specific regions on digital channels so moving to this level of targeting is one hell of a leap forward, and one that promises to make TV buying a very exciting place over the next few years.

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