Nev Hasan, Executive Director of Agency Sales at Foxtel Media
Upfronts season is wrapping up for television and everyone is starting to look to 2023 and what we can expect for the first "post-pandemic" year. At our own event, Foxtel Media made several impactful announcements around advertising on BINGE, our continued investment in FoxTest and our $23 million investment in our adtech updates.
As we head into 2023, we’re expecting marketing to be challenged. Inflation, a falling Australian dollar and a possible global recession are combining to create a bleaker economic picture. Traditionally, advertising and marketing budgets are first to feel the squeeze in these tough times.
However, businesses who cut marketing risk halting conversations with the customers of today and tomorrow, ultimately leading to stagnating bottom lines. The answer is making budgets work smarter and harder. After all, an effective use of media will naturally deliver better results for brands and agencies.
How do you become better at buying advertising?
As a starting point towards maximising effectiveness, planning and execution teams need to be more aligned on how they are activating campaigns. For example, it doesn’t make the most sense to buy ads on our premium sports service, Kayo, like you would on a traditional BVOD service. Kayo audiences behave very differently, with audience viewing and engagement hitting massive peaks during live broadcasts and over the weekend – so adjusting your campaign buy to match this behaviour will get the best bang for your buck while maximising reach.
Leveraging platform insights to unlock the most powerful advertising opportunities will be a major differentiator in the effectiveness ranks. It goes without saying that not all platforms are created equal when it comes to delivering audience engagement and therefore advertising cut-through.
Based on extensive FoxTest experiments with Amplified Intelligence, we found higher levels of attention for ads across Foxtel audiences based on higher consumption and considerably less advertising frequency to other broadcasters. Kayo delivers 30% greater engagement when compared to free-to-air channels and soon we will be feeding this data into Amplified Intelligence’s Attention Plan tool, enabling agencies to further optimise their media investment across audiences.
Another FoxTest with Spark Foundry looked at how to optimise creative executions for a campaign that ran across linear TV, BVOD and social video. This FoxTest leveraged audio content recognition technology provided by Beatgrid to identify cross-media campaign exposure, alongside survey data and modelling from Nature to determine impact on brand and ROI. This allowed us to better understand its role in future media planning across elements such as channel, frequency, and ad length. Ultimately the goal is to uncover insights that will contribute to a better experience for viewers and a better outcome for advertisers.
Watchability
One key factor that needs to be at the centre of the push towards maximising effectiveness is watchability. This means making sure that the audience experience is prioritised. When viewers have a good ad experience, they increase their engagement with a platform and its content. For example, by striking the right frequency and changing up execution, advertisers can talk to an audience multiple times in the same ad break, while overly repeating the same ad can have an adverse impact on the viewing experience. Understanding watchability, also gives brands the ability to tell a story or deliver sequential messaging.
At Foxtel Media we put watchabilty at the core of our platforms and manage frequency very strictly. Our audiences are not going to be served five auto ads in the same ad break, meaning that audiences retain a favourable experience and brands retain clean space to communicate without competition. We’re also concentrating on uncovering the most effective opportunities, such as solus breaks. FoxTest research showed spontaneous ad recall is up to 34% higher for a solus advertisement, and brand appeal is up to 4 times higher.
Another pain point that we have heard over the years from brand partners and agencies alike is the difficulty and inconvenience of transacting on the different platforms available; a challenge that is growing as we become inundated with AVOD options. We’re determined to address this long-standing issue for Foxtel Media’s partners, and as such, we’re building a one-stop solution where ads can be bought across our services and streamlining our structure to make it as seamless as possible. So instead of having half a dozen different conversations with different platforms, it’s one conversation facilitated through Foxtel Media.
Additionally, with the significant amount of personnel churn we know that agencies are experiencing, we are confident that this new buying platform and our cleaner set up will aid new employees jumping straight into their roles and ensure that advertising is minimally disrupted during handovers.
When you effectively plan media better and execute it better, brands and agencies will naturally see more effective campaigns because advertising has more impact. And when budgets are under pressure, ensuring efficient spend is all the more critical.
While ensuring we deliver best in class from a technology standpoint, we have to provide a better experience for both audiences and advertisers. With great audience advertising experiences, effective campaigns and clever use of budgets, Foxtel Media is positive that 2023 will hold a plethora of challenges and opportunities that we will meet with collaboration and creativity. By unlocking the watchability of Foxtel for audiences, we will help maximise advertising efficiency for brands.
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