As a part of its membership in the professional organization egta, the Association of Television and Radio Companies from Europe and beyond, the Association of Commercial Television was granted the opportunity to host egta’s 2019 professional CEO & Top Exec’s Summit – the annual, 2-day egta-member meeting, where media companies share their experience, inspiration and contacts. This year’s meeting took place on June 6-7 and included more than 220 participants from 33 countries.

What does this say about programmatic video ads? Despite marketers’ efforts with advanced programmatic and data targeting for video ads, consumers still find that they are more likely to be served a relevant ad on linear TV. According to a survey conducted by Adobe in February 2019, 49% of US internet users said that TV was one of the mediums where they were most likely to see a relevant ad, while just 12% said the same about streaming video.

Collectively, online businesses are the biggest category of advertisers on TV in the UK, accounting for almost 15% of total spending via this channel in 2018 and 40% more than the next biggest category which is food. Latest figures from Thinkbox indicate Amazon, in particular, boosted its TV spending by 21% to £60m last year as it promoted its Alexa voice assistant, putting it in the top three advertisers, behind Procter & Gamble and Reckitt Benckiser.

While addressable TV has been talked about in certain industry circles for some time, it seems the wider marketing industry has yet to truly appreciate its potential. With new, head-turning channels and marketing approaches launching all the time, it can be easy to overlook the transformation other media channels have undergone, especially those around for a long time. For the past year, ISBA has been working with its TV and AV Steering Group to fully understand this innovative advertising technology, get to grips with the opportunities it offers and get a heads up on what’s over the horizon.

Like two siblings vying for a parent’s attention, digital and traditional advertising have been fighting for advertisers' attention since digital came of age in the post-dot-com bubble era. Many have portrayed this as a war between generations, where the old guard “just didn’t get it.” But this shouldn’t be seen as a battle of relevance between old and young or a battle for the billions of dollars of media that advertisers spend. Because the losers in a war of this kind are not just the advertisers, but also the consumers they serve.

The slow but steady digitization of TV advertising will place further pressure on ad measurement companies to create more robust cross-platform metrics and attribution models. But for that to happen, several types of companies—including multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) and TV networks—need to update their technologies and strategies.TV ad buyers have long advocated for more precise metrics, but measurement firms have struggled to create innovative products that work within TV’s legacy infrastructure.