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investment by advertisers in television programming because clients are of the view that unless this is their primary business they shouldn’t be doing it. In several cases in recent years, GroupM has actually aggregated several clients into a single investment. SECOND SCREENING
The growth of second screening— using another device, such as a PC or a tablet, while watching TV—is a phenomenon that advertisers are still digesting, for good or ill. It may open up new opportunities, but the actual interaction between TV and the second screen appears muted so far. A new study by Deloitte reports that 24 percent of the people surveyed in the U.K. use second screens, and nearly half of all 16- to 24-year-olds use messaging, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter to discuss what they are viewing on TV while they watch. But only one in ten people browse the Internet for information about the program they are watching, while 40 percent like being able to send their comments in to a live program. “Second screening’s impact is far greater in driving conversations about a program as opposed to
interaction with it,” says Paul Lee, the director of technology, media and telecommunications research at Deloitte. “It might be a brandnew technology-enabled distraction or it might simply represent the swapping of an analog distraction, such as reading newspapers or magazines, for a digital one.” A great potential benefit of the second screen, and digital platforms generally, is in providing feedback. “Advertisers will be changing the way they see content,” Havas Media’s Cabrera says. “They can see beyond the audience numbers and they are seeing content touch the market in different ways. They can see the realtime reaction to advertising in the context of programming. Advertisers will need to understand where their brands fit better. “Social media is strengthening the television experience. Social media enables you to see how people react to your content, even to the characters in a show. You can see what they think chapter by chapter. You can see not only the audience but the content sentiment in real time. And nowadays you have to use this information. The whole
Digital disruption: Technologies such as DISH Network’s Hopper DVR—which allows users to skip over ads—are forcing brands to develop marketing strategies that include much more than the 30-second spot.
decision-making process has collapsed. It’s a new world.” A central reality of the new world is that people are watching more video online and advertisers are going after them. Online video advertising spending reached an average of 7.6 percent of the total online display market value across 15 European markets in 2011, according to AdEx Benchmark.The share ranges from a high of 9.8 percent in Sweden to 0.6 percent in Hungary. In Germany and the U.K., online video advertising revenues crossed the €100 million ($125 million) threshold in 2011.
Revving up: The U.K.-based Grand Central worked with Nissan and PlayStation on the reality series GT Academy, which aired on a host of broadcasters and on digital platforms like Hulu. 146
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Some Internet video investment will simply return to different pockets of the broadcast groups. In the U.K., ITV and Sky.com ranked among the top ten online advertising sites last year in terms of impressions, according to Nielsen. ITV was number seven with 3 percent of the market, while Sky.com was tenth with 2.7 percent. YouTube was number one, taking 14.4 percent. The advertising market is increasingly becoming a space where the ITVs of the world compete with YouTube. The good news is that people still want professionally produced content. “Content is still king and the differentiating factor is going to be talent, not technology,” Cabrera says. Television advertising is on the way to becoming more like Internet advertising, according to Cabrera, with contextual ads and real-time feedback—in short, it will be more data-driven. “The feedback loop exists in real time. Now you can decide exactly where and when to place your ad. Advertisers will want to place ads where they want and they will want flexibility.” Gotlieb is convinced that television can deliver for them. “I think the 30-second spot is doing quite well, thank you,” he says. “But I think in some ways the capabilities of television are likely to be able to leapfrog some of the most advanced capabilities that exist in the digital world today.”