The time is right for commercial TV to be adapting for advertisers, says Mediacom’s chief investment officer Claire Butterworth, commenting on Seven’s move to reduce its ad load across digital and broadcast channels.
Butterworth welcomed the new strategy from Seven, saying networks should be using increased audience, that’s come as people spend more time indoors to slow the spread of the virus, to test new formats.
Under Seven’s strategy, the length of ad breaks and the amount of ads will be cut to generate higher engagement from viewers.
“I think it’s a good model,” Butterworth says. “They've done the research and if partners want to buy it I think that's a good thing.
“It’s good that the broadcast networks are being quite agile at the moment and trying new things.
“It's a good time to do it. We know audiences are up at the moment. We know you have a more captive audience, so it's a good time to test and learn a little bit more.”
While the TV industry has enjoyed higher audience numbers during lockdowns, they’ve faced falling advertising revenue as brands hold back on their marketing spend.
Seven, already in financial difficulty prior to the pandemic, lost the Tokyo Olympics for the year and the AFL, which returns next month.
Research that a less cluttered advertising environment leads to higher brand recall has been available for years. And now that consumers have greater choice with SVOD and BVOD services, which have less advertising or none at all, Butterworth says it makes sense to replicate that, to an extent, on linear TV.
“I don't think this particular ad format would necessarily change how we would approach our channel strategy - whether or not TV be a channel or not,” Butterworth says.
“But it could amplify a brief or a response, it could amplify a partnership that we already have for the right client.
“It’s a nice-to-have. The research is slightly new, but the format itself and the methodology around recall being a lot higher for shorter ad breaks and first and last in break isn't new, but I do think that it will provide a point of difference for their programming.”
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