While the viewer experience on broadcaster video on demand (BVOD) can be improved, there is no silver bullet from competitors around video advertising.
That’s the word from media agencies after frequency capping issues were raised at the recent Future Of TV forum in Sydney.
Uber APAC head of marketing Lucinda Barlow ignited debate after revealing ad loads for a NSW health advertisement while viewing the Australian Open on a BVOD service.
Barlow, a former Youtube executive, said the BVOD experience was “nowhere near the Nirvana presented earlier”.
“I saw that NSW Health COVID-19 vaccine ad I think, 300 times,” she said. “And I almost wanted to not get vaccinated. But that's an addressable experience with very, very valuable customers that are hard to reach through other mechanisms.”
The Forum has encouraged conversation around frequency capping on BVOD, as well as a broader analysis of investment decisions across screens.
Spark Foundry head of investment officer Lucie Jansen said while there is work to be done to improve experience in BVOD environments, engagement is "a bit of a double-edged sword".
“According to research by The Media Precinct 54% of respondents say that because catch up environments have less ads, they are likely to watch them more closely. This is obviously a selling point for BVOD providers but it also means that the audience are going to be very aware of repetition and high frequency of the same ad.
“It’s important to bear in mind that this isn’t just a BVOD issue, ad load is an issue for many environments which are planned and bought to impressions over exclusive reach.
“In many cases, agencies and clients are planning and buying BVOD to maximise the unique reach of Total TV campaigns. And as such the networks need to be looking to take the learnings from their linear operations in terms of implementing an option for prioritising single spotting in program.”
The total TV advertising market, which includes metropolitan free-to-air, regional free-to-air, subscription TV and BVOD and excludes SBS, recorded combined revenue of $4.1 billion for the year to December 2021, up 19.9% year on year. BVOD revenue for the total financial year was $363 million, up 67.8%.
Carat chief investment officer Craig Cooper said growing demand could be behind the visibility of ad frequency this year.
“BVOD platforms in Australia, despite their many advances and progressive state versus other countries, has unfortunately been plagued with frequency capping issues for many years now. This won’t be new news to the TV networks, who have highlighted that this core issue revolves around the many ‘pipes’ into trading their inventory – in other words the many avenues we can buy BVOD today; be it direct IO, programmatic or DSP and sponsorships.
“The frequency issue is perhaps more visible in 2022, given the increase in spend into this channel based on the evolving consumer behaviours, and thereby an increase in ad slots. Hopefully with more vocal clients such as Lucinda Barlow, frequency capping will become more of a priority and the networks will resolve; given technology options available this just shouldn’t be a problem clients or agencies need to worry about.”
The topic of measurement and optimisation was also raised during the forum, with Barlow broaching the subject in relation to ad spend. She reported around 25% of Uber’s TV investment is held back in order to get a read of the causal uplift for brand and sales.
“Measurement is so critical, obviously, for marketers, and it’s so hard and expensive,” she said. “We actually advertise on YouTube first, not just because that’s where I come from, but because the measurement is so easy. You can measure a brand, on a reasonably small amount that you can get learnings and insights quickly.”
Cooper said as BVOD capabilities evolve, this could present networks with an opportunity to move deeper into attribution modelling.
“Linear TV haven’t really played in client attribution modelling space, as anecdotal sales uplifts discussions as well as Think TV’s large scale independent research projects have helped them sell the brand building dream to advertisers – and given the inflation in Linear TV over the last 18 months, it’s likely TV will stand the test of time. As the Australian BVOD space matures, this could certainly be an opportunity for the TV networks to dip the toe in the water with attribution modelling and we would welcome those opportunities to test and learn in the video environment.”
Jansen said while other video platforms provide deeper audience targeting, there are varying capabilities across platforms and screens.
“BVOD certainly plays an important role in helping to mitigate the inflation we are seeing in linear TV due to declining audiences. It will also be a key element of tent pole sponsorships for properties that attract audiences on catch up and streaming. However, it is less sophisticated compared to other video environments which provide more granularity in audience targeting and measurement. That doesn’t mean one is better than the other though, it just means that they serve different functions.
“YouTube for example, has an important role to play in reaching audiences and doesn’t suffer to the same degree from the frequency capping challenge. But it is not a fair comparison in terms of environment. While “YouTubers” are on the rise and the platform has invested in recent years to improve brand safety and suitability control, it is still mostly user generated content, so it is not a like-for-like comparison to BVOD environments in terms of quality of production.”
Brand safety, quality content and short form versus long form consumer salience were listed as key competitive differences by Cooper.
“It’s no secret that YouTube has been looking for growth within the linear TV space for some time, and they have had some successes. But whether YouTube as a platform is more effective than linear TV, is something that’s unlikely to be proven anytime soon.
“YouTube (Google) are masters of attribution modelling because they knew by being able to metrically prove effectiveness, it could ultimately lead to repeat spend/usage from advertisers. This is why YouTube should be considered within the plethora of video options, but not in isolation."
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