In terms of audience share, both of the leading networks have kept their positions in their key audience groups in the first half of the year.

The largest TV market networks, Media Club and Nova Group, maintained the lead in their primary target groups by audience share in the first half of this year. Media Club has informed that in the 15-69 target group its hare was 34.19% in the first half, which was the highest value in this audience category. The result includes performance of Atmedia, the agency with which Media Club cooperates in the advertising market. 

Excluding Atmedia’s share, the average share of Media Club (i.e. stations of the Prima, Barrandov and Óčko Groups and the Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., NickToons, Paramount Network and Retro channels) was up 29.66% in the 15-69 group in the first half of 2021. It was the second highest share following Česká televize. 

Nova Group remains to be the strongest in the audience share in its primary target group of viewers aged 15-54. In the first half, it accounted for 33.13%, which was the best result out of all other networks.

All data relate to the specified target groups in all day broadcasting and are based on the official measuring by ATO-Nielsen Admosphere.

As we have already informed, in terms of the development of audience share in individual TV groups, it was primarily Česká televize who did well in the first half of the year, reporting the best results  year-on-year. The key driver was the recovery of sports events and, consequently, the growth in its sports channel ČT sport compared to the last year’s first quarter. Thematic stations of Atmedia were also successful.

Source: https://www.mediaguru.cz

During a time when adtech is experiencing tectonic shifts in how it handles consumer data privacy and obtains information about its audiences, the over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) channels bring welcomed new opportunities to marketers. They are some of the biggest marketing channels at the moment, and they have a phenomenal reach with significant measurability in understanding the customer journey.

OTT and CTV often go hand-in-hand but also get confused and interchanged. To be clear, OTT is content that streams over the internet and bypasses cable, broadcast and satellite television platforms — running “over the top” of those gatekeepers via the internet. CTV are devices enabled by the internet or that can plug into a TV for streaming services like Amazon Fire or Roku.

I’ve heard some in adtech describe that OTT and CTV are at the beginning of something big — much like mobile was a decade ago — and it’s exciting to see what’s possible when you can reach more people at any time in a precise way, using a traditional medium (TV) with digital advertising techniques.

OTT and CTV have been increasing in popularity since before the pandemic hit, and having more people at home this past year has fueled their audiences even more. A recent survey by The Trade Desk showed that 27% of consumers in their sample are planning to cut their cable cords and look for free, low-cost streaming TV. That same survey revealed that 68% of TV viewing comes from streaming services — just more proof that OTT and CTV are a significant opportunity for marketers.

Further, the accessibility of content on connected devices allows marketers to measure users across devices and platforms. Consumer identity graphs can be constructed for targeting, and attribution and incremental lift are more attainable than with traditional mobile marketing alone where device identifiers are necessary and new privacy restrictions limit their use.

Identifying Audiences And Connecting The Dots With Cross-Platform Measurement

The ability to measure in advertising is crucial for success and the best use of budgets. In advertising, measurement, especially in television, hasn’t always been precise. Traditional approaches are based on ratings that are largely panel-based and generally thought of as antiquated in comparison to what the industry has seen with digital advertising measurement. 

With OTT and CTV riding on the internet, cross-platform targeting and measurement are finally accessible. The catch is that the exposure happens on the TV, but the action is happening on mobile devices. With cross-device graphs and the power of digital signal via OTT and CTV, it’s possible to determine and attribute actions from a mobile device back to an ad on CTV/OTT.

OTT and CTV have been a massive area of growth in the past year. We can now deduplicate audiences down to the household level, validate activity off the spend happening on CTV and have new ways to target households based on attributes from the mobile device. Instead of targeting a household that has a CTV device, for example, marketers can target the devices in that household based on the other attributes about them — the points of interest, other apps on the devices and other indices of identity can be layered in. This has been a boost for many of our brand customers moving into OTT and CTV.

With respect to increasing data privacy policies, however, OTT and CTV are not immune from them altogether. Apple has made it clear that you can’t merge or transfer data between companies without an optic on that. What’s compelling with these two channels is that you don’t need a static identifier, and there are net new mechanisms being introduced associated with identity. While there is no single identity graph to rule them all, so to speak, we can map a brand’s identity graph as a data set in a privacy-safe way with traceable consent.

Incrementality Testing And CTV

To see the big picture of ad campaigns, marketers can measure their impact through incrementality testing to determine lift. Using an identity graph, a forensic control (holdout) group can be created so the advertiser can serve ads to their entire audience and not just a segment of it. Using the same identity graph, campaign data can be matched so marketers can learn more about their audiences and what messages resonated with them.

OTT campaigns can also include QR codes with an embedded deep link. When consumers scan the code, they are redirected to content on their mobile device, and marketers can measure that journey through the funnel. It’s a great way to take advantage of the second screen trend and measure the user journey from the living room screen to the handheld one.

Advanced Television And A New Era Of Streaming Content

There’s a bright and exciting future for television advertising with the ability to reach more audiences on streaming services and connected devices. OTT and CTV offer consumers enormous amounts of creative content. For marketers, they have reinvigorated TV by giving them the ability to measure these campaigns and tie their audiences to downstream events.

Source: https://www.forbes.com

Halfway through a relatively momentous 2021, with the pandemic ebbing in at least some parts of the planet, several major trends have emerged, or re-emerged, and will help shape where the streaming-video industry heads going forward. The conflicts between those sometimes contradictory trends will shape the next stage of development in what’s clearly now the next generation of “TV.” Those trends are:

Consolidation

AT&T’s “Never mind” move to walk back its $85 billion 2018 Time Warner deal, shipping the dramatically restructured WarnerMedia off to the welcoming arms of David Zaslav and Discovery Inc. is actually a little bit of deconsolidation along the way to considerably more concentration. It will, pending government approvals, give Zaslav control over 200,000 hours of content, and already has scared the pants off competitors, who started looking for their own ways to get bigger. Amazon quickly found one, buying MGM, and Sony partnered up with both Netflix and Disney+ for outlets for its movies. Lots of other conversations have been ping-ponging about, no doubt even more so in this week’s annual Sun Valley media confab hosted by Allen & Co. Count on more deals, after what PwC said was a record 410 mergers & acquisitions in the media and telecom sectors in the first half of the year. More deals, that is, unless the next trend proves more impactful…

Antitrust Fervor

President Joe Biden named antitrust theoretician Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, then made her chairperson. He followed that with a batch of Department of Justice nominations featuring lawyers with an antipathy toward the kinds of anti-competitive behaviors most strongly tied to the tech giants. That would be fine for Hollywood, except now half the town’s major players are trillion-dollar giants from Silicon Valley. And Biden isn’t the only one itching to make trouble for the big companies. Conservatives who believe they get treated badly by the social-media platforms would also like to make chop-chop in various legislative ways. Whether the fiercely partisan Congress can find some areas of agreement is another issue. In the meantime, Facebook won a major, if temporary victory when a judge threw out an antitrust case by the FTC and nearly 50 states. The FTC will get to refile, but the states won’t. The judge said they missed their shot to block the 2012/2014 deals for WhatsApp and Instagram by not saying anything then. Count on states attorneys general to be even more aggressive about interceding in big deals if they no longer get to have second thoughts. The push and pull tension between consolidation fears and antitrust fervor will likely continue for many months to come.

Going Global

Now that pretty much all the media companies planning to launch a major SVOD service have done so (bringing to a close the last era of the streaming wars), companies are beginning to roll out their operations in more territories and continents. They’re following the Willie Sutton Theory of Revenue Acquisition: that’s where the money is, particularly with a very crowded menu of worthy competitors in the United States. Netflix holds a good hand in this regard, given that it has been operating in nearly every territory in the world for several years now. Netflix these days spends its time buying and building local productions, some of which, as Co-CEO Reed Hastings noted in the company’s last earnings call, have a chance to become a worldwide hit. This spring, that list includes France’s Lupin, Mexico’s Who Killed Sara?, Italy’s Generation 56K, Iceland’s Katla, and Spain’s Money Heist (now being remade in Korea). Other competitors are pushing into new territories, led by Disney with both Disney+ and the launch this spring of Star, a more general-interest service that features as both a “hub” within the lily-white confines of Disney+ in some overseas territories and a standalone operation in others. Other players are moving into English-speaking territories, Latin America, Europe and other potential opportunities. No territory has been more hotly sought after than India, with its 300-million-strong middle class and growing media consumption. But the Subcontinent – which was already complicated by religion, caste and two-dozen official languages – has gotten positively treacherous. As Netflix found out, Indian audiences want local content, not rehashed Hollywood franchises. Far worse, the Modi government has become very aggressive in trying to control media and social-media outlets. It banned dozens of Chinese apps after a bloody border skirmish a year ago, and now is cracking down on Twitter over perceived foot-dragging compliance with new content restrictions. India’s impossible to ignore as a vast opportunity for new customers as streamers search for growth, but the biggest market out there has become a minefield just as all the new services are getting their feet under them, and needing more subscribers to quell Wall Street concerns. All of which brings us to….

Transparency, Or Lack Therein

For any given streaming service out there, chances are outsiders know very little (at least from the companies themselves) about key issues such as churn rates, average revenue per user, or even net paying subscribers. Oh sure, companies are quick to trumpet big percentage gains in subs, without providing more detail. They might talk about an all-in figure that includes give-away deals with wireless carriers (or pretty much everything Apple sells), leftover subs from earlier streaming operations that haven’t been shut down yet, or other ways to pump up the volume. That worked last year, and into this one. But more investors and analysts are getting antsy for better detail about what’s happening with the streaming services. They’re getting more inquisitive about those telling second-level statistics, and are beginning to wonder if companies aren’t talking because the story is an ugly one to tell. That’s almost certainly case for the quietest mouse in the church, Apple. Cupertino has elevated the product pitch to a sublime art melding music, dance, obscure product features and high production values. But the total time Apple executives have spent publicly discussing TV+ since it debuted 20 months ago wouldn’t fill a full episode of Ted Lasso. Apple finally is going to start charging its original subscribers for the service, beginning this month. Perhaps now that TV+ costs something, the company will need to talk about what it actually has made, and how much it’s making. The success of TV+ won’t matter much to Apple’s mammoth bottom line (the Services unit it is part of now generates more than $60 billion in annual revenues, dwarfing the market capitalizations of companies such as Sony and ViacomCBS). But investors are going to care a lot more about CEO silences and pregnant pauses at several other streaming services if they can’t start delivering more detail, and demonstrate a winning, and affordably sustainable, strategy.

Back to the Future

The biggest trend shaping the industry in its next iteration: how will people watch video on TV going forward, and how much will they watch? The pandemic is eased enough in big markets such as California and New York that life is starting to look recognizably like the Before Times, plus a bunch of new things, like great home-entertainment systems and a facility with Zoom and apps. Universal had a great July 4th weekend at the traditional theatrical box office, its films grabbing the three top spots. But will people truly return to theaters in droves (the F9 box office gross topped $500 million worldwide after two weeks, but is anything else going to do that anytime soon?) In similar fashion, broadcast and cable are getting back some of the things that used to make them important, like live sports in something like normal seasons and times of year. Will that slow down the deluge of cord-cutting that hit during the pandemic, or are viewers now up to speed on the technical tweaks needed to zip between streaming services, and occasionally flit to those live channels they get in their cord-shaver package from an MVPD? The rest of July and August likely won’t be much of an indicator of new patterns of consumption, given the apparently inevitable arrival of the Olympics and Black Widow, and little else. But starting in September, as people actually return (or not) to offices and schools, we’ll start to see the first indications whether the pivot by media companies and advertisers to Connected TVs will continue to pay off. Will newly adapted viewers continue to rely on streaming services for most of their entertainment (and news and sports and first-run movies), or will many of them snap back to something closer to 2019? The pandemic accelerated a decade’s worth of shifts to CTV; we’ll see how permanent the shift is in what we can only hope will be a more routine Next Future.

Source: https://tvrev.com

When it comes to ad-supported TV platforms and networks versus ad-free TV services, one study says the decision is still mixed — essentially a hung jury.

More than half (57%) of respondents of a recent poll say they can tolerate “some ads,” with 17% saying they can’t tolerate any advertising. Another 26% say “content matters more than ads.”

This is according to a June 2021 Hub Entertainment Research study of 3,001 U.S. consumers age 14-74, who watch at least one hour of TV per week.

The picture is cloudier when considering price: 58% of respondents say they would switch to an ad-supported platform if they could save $4 to $5 a month. The other 42% say that even with a $4 to $5-a-month saving, they rather pay more to avoid advertising.

The research also indicated a mixed result for leading streamer Netflix.

When asked whether Netflix offered a new ad-supported tier with pre-roll ads, 54% of the respondents said they would keep the “ad-free” plan, while 46% said they would switch.

Results were not substantially different when more advertising time was added — with mid-roll messaging to pre-roll ads, 61% said they would keep the ad-free version, while 39% would switch to ad-supported platforms..

Still, Hub says it depends on the service: “What’s clear from these findings is that what matters to consumers is not whether ads are included in the content they watch, but how ads are delivered.”

The study notes while nearly all TV consumers (95%) watch at least one ad-supported source, a majority (79%) also watch at least one ad-free TV source.

Surce: https://www.mediapost.com

Conventional wisdom says that TV viewers will do anything to avoid ads, but viewer behavior says something different, the Hub reports

BOSTON—While the popularity of ad-free SVOD services like Netflix and Disney Plus has caused worries that marketers will have a harder time reaching consumers, new research from Hub suggests that viewers are relatively tolerant of ads and that their attitudes toward ad-supported services has a lot to do with cost and how the ads are delivered. 

The first wave of Hub’s “TV Advertising: Fact vs. Fiction” study found that consumers view both ad-free and ad-supported content and that it is not an either or choice for them. 

The survey found that nearly all TV consumers (95%) watch from at least one ad-supported source and a large majority (79%) also report that they watch at least one ad-free TV source. 

Nearly one in five consumers (17%) reported that they can’t tolerate them and won’t sign up for a service with ads while another group (26%) says the content is more important than ads. 

But 57% fall between these two statements agreeing with the statement that “I can tolerate a certain number of ads, but if there are too many I’ll go elsewhere.”

Consumers are also more willing to view ads when the cost of the services is added to the mix. 

Given the choice between a lower-cost ad-supported service and a higher-cost ad-free service—assuming the same content—most would be willing to watch ads, with 58% saying they’d prefer an ad-supported service that costs $4-$5 less per month than an ad-free service. About 42% said they would pay more to avoid ads.

Interestingly, the proportion who would choose a less expensive, ad-supported service over an ad-free service actually includes one-third of those who initially said that, on principle, they’d “never consider” a TV service with ads.

“What’s clear from these findings is that what matters to consumers is not whether ads are included in the content they watch, but how ads are delivered,” said Mark Loughney, Hub senior consultant and co-author of the study. “Even consumers who say they’re categorically opposed to ads will use an ad-supported platform if the price and ad delivery are right.”

The data comes from the first wave of Hub’s “TV Advertising: Fact Vs. Fiction” study, conducted among 3,0001 US consumers aged 14-74, who watch at least 1 hour of TV per week. The data were collected in June 2021. 

Zdroj: https://www.tvtechnology.com

An increasing share of video on demand and online video and TV blending may be expected as one of the directions of TV broadcasting development.

Payments for TV content viewing will increase in the Czech Republic, and TV and video content will blend at the same time. While TV operators gradually enter the field of video on demand (VOD) and subscription video on demand (SVOD), streaming operators seek to offer linear services. This is one of the observations made in the discussion on the future of TV broadcasting held on Wednesday as part of the Contagious Re-starter conference.

Daniel Grunt, Head of Digital of CME and TV Nova, estimates that at present, about half of the Czech population pays for TV (in addition to the licence fees, i.e. payments to operators for TV programme subscription). He expects that in future, majority of population will pay for TV broadcasting and the difference between linear TV and video on demand or timeshift will fade away. “People will watch what they enjoy. The TV and online worlds are approaching each other and their boundaries will merge,” he said, outlining the development.

Covid-19 accelerated the development of paid market by 2-3 years

The Covid-19 pandemic has driven higher interest in video on demand in the Czech market according to the discussion participants. “It started the development of SVOD as people were not used to paying for content. Every month we can see that on Voyo where the number of subscribers has been increasing,” said Grunt, expecting that the share of VOD and SVOD in the Czech market will keep growing. In his opinion, the pandemic has accelerated the paid video content market by 2-3 years. Linear TV will not dampen although we may expect that its share will not be growing. Tomáš Búřil, Sales Director of Seznam.cz, under which Televize Seznam operates, notices changes in viewers’ needs. “In the morning, they immediately search for news content, they do not wait till the evening. TV will be more passive, but on the other hand, we no longer make any distinction between TV and the internet in Seznam, it is just one video content,” he described.   

Seznam.cz wants GRP metrics for online video

Merging TV and online video content is reflected in business as well. Operators strive to provide clients with aggregate reach of video content that is equal to GRP. Seznam.cz wants to go in this direction, following Media Club and Óčko TV Group. “We are close to the combination of GRPs on TV and on the web; some clients have invested more in online video than in TV,” specified Búřil. He is also convinced that the internet market may be twice as large as the TV market in the Czech Republic (annual turnovers of TV operators of about CZK 9 billion, turnover of Seznam.cz of about CZK 5 billion; according to the estimate made by Tomáš Búřil, Seznam’s share in the internet is 30%, Google and Facebook account for 30% each).

CNC prepares a premium product

Juraj Felix, co-CEO of Czech News Center (CNC) and CEO of Mall.TV can also see the trend towards paid content. For CNC, video is one of several channels to address users and create space for advertisers. “CNC has invested much in content creation. In terms of video, the time spent with video is more crucial for us than the number of clicks. We are betting on a smart TV application,” he said. According to him,  CNC is testing how to design a premium product that would contain all media types. “We will have a more clear strategy at the end of the year, it will be cross-media and will contain video,” he added.

Voyo will not go against Netflix

With the expected increase in the number of VOD users, segmentation of audiences for various video services should be taken into consideration. For example, Voyo on which Nova’s digital strategy is based targets viewers between 25 and 50 years searching for the Czech original (TV series) programmes. “We are fishing in waters of Czech TV series. SVOD is not for young people, it is no longer true. We will educate older people. It will require more work but the potential is greater because the number of these people is higher,“ he outlined Nova’s plans. According to him, Voyo will not want to compete directly with Netflix whose estimated primary target group is up to 29 years.

Source: https://www.mediaguru.cz

Monitoring for this May reports an almost one-third year-on-year growth in investments in media ad space.

The volume of gross monitored investments directed at media ad space purchases in May shows a significant year-on-year growth. On average, it exceeds 30% in the monitored ATL offline media. In gross figures, it is two billion Czech crowns more than last May. This is the outcome of AdIntel monitoring by Nielsen Admosphere.

A two-digit growth was reported by all monitored media with the highest values being achieved in print, OOH advertising and TV. Last May suffered from lower investments due to the first wave of the pandemic; compared to that period, this May shows that advertisers’ interest has recovered.

For the period of the first five month of this year (January to May), the monitored volume of ad investments is five percent higher than in the same period last year. Print and TV ads show the most favourable development while OOH advertising has lagged behind the last year’s volume.

The summary does not include investments in internet advertising as the monitoring only covers display advertising.

Please note that the volumes monitored do not express real volumes invested in media advertising, they rather show development trends.

Source: https://www.mediaguru.cz

Óčko and Hybrid convert video advertising delivered on the HbbTV platform into the GRP equivalent.

The TV group Óčko and the tech company Hybrid use data from the official audience measurement of the non-linear digital video content (PEM-D) to calculate advertising GRPs. They measure the delivery of non-linear video ads using the HbbTV platform (the red button). It is a solution connecting linear and non-linear video advertising that is assessed in the online equivalent of the GRP TV currency.

“This innovation is another step leading to the symbiosis of the ‘classic’ linear TV and non-linear TV services that will be even more effective and efficient for advertisers,” said Štěpán Wolde, CEO of Óčko.

“In the development, we fully respected the standards of official TV audience measurement using the PEM-D method. We modify the resulting data by coefficients of our station’s official viewer rating and report campaign results to clients through GRP analogy,” said Hana Dolečková, Head of Data & Research of Óčko.

“We are at the beginning of the digital revolution of the TV market, fighting with global streaming platforms when broadcasters are transformed into data-driven companies. And that is just the beginning of the journey. Another fundamental shift will occur after the launch of Afterspot, our technology and data service, which will deliver video ads to viewers who have not seen linear spots or have seen them with low frequency. This will result in an additional incremental reach of campaign with the help of video advertising, which is an equivalent of the incremental GRP. For now, we call is simply SuperGRP,” outlined Lukáš Hnilička, CEO of Hybrid.

The Óčko TV group sells its advertising space also as part of a package of stations represented by Media Club, which is also seeking to report delivered video ads to clients in a manner equal to the TV ad GRP. This means that eGRP is part of Media Club’s business policy. The company expects that the space for creating TV GRPs will decline in future. “We can hardly expect that viewers’ behaviour will go back two years before the pandemic and people will start cancelling their subscriptions to Netflix or HBO. It is an outlook with which we have to work – that is why we seek to create an adequate space for online advertising communication, working with GRPs in digital as well,” explained Petr Hatlapatka, Head of Online Sales of Media Club, in a recent interview.

Source: https://www.mediaguru.cz