The television sector will see plenty of new products and innovation next year, as well as the rise of connected TV (CTV), according to industry insiders.
TV audiences have increased over the past two years, in line with wider media consumption, due to the pandemic.
To keep advertisers within the TV ecosystem, 10 ViacomCBS’ Lisa Squillace and MiQ’s Damien Healy expect to see new products from the sector.
“We’ll see incredible competition and innovation in this space throughout 2022,” says Damien Healy, MiQ digital operations officer. “TV is of course just another channel that’s digitising, and it’s joined by DOOH, digital audio, and pre-existing digital channels.”
Additionally, connected TV is expected to dominate the sector following its rise over recent months.
“We should all expect CTV to dominate the headlines for the foreseeable future,” says Luke Dickens, Lotame managing director.
“Australia is leading the world in CTV ad spend growth, with more companies seeing the value of one of the fastest growing channels in digital advertising.”
Lisa Squillace, 10 ViacomCBS national sales director: Total TV will continue to see huge demand into 2022. Over the last two years, advertisers have come back to our medium as we have again proven that television is the best platform to reach mass audiences, quickly. 10’s premium content and integration opportunities are the best in the industry and continue to drive phenomenal results. Broadcast video on demand viewing will continue its growth trajectory and the ability to be fluid across our video platforms will be key in 2022. 2022 will see new products introduced and more opportunities for clients. There will be more opportunities to become involved in our subscription video on demand service, Paramount+, which is game changing for clients trying to reach the hardest to find audiences.
Natalie Harvey, Seven West Media director of sales: 2022: How did that come around so quickly? I am very confident that we will see less discussion and media reporting on overnight TV numbers as more clients, agencies and trade adopt the modern view on audiences. Too early to call the death of the overnight? We will also see cross platform audience delivery accelerate with progressive traders/ clients leaning in hard on evolved trading models. As Connected TV continues to scale, the platform will move from being predominately about reach extension off broadcast to brands leveraging publisher data capabilities to connect with more targeted audiences & harnessing new ad innovation & ecommerce capabilities to engage deeper & generate real-time business outcomes. Expect to see brands leveraging big events and big sporting audiences. Entertainment, Finance and Travel categories will be VERY noisy and compete hard for share of voice. Market wise…the early signals on the first half are showing the massive demand experienced in 2020 will continue across both broadcast & digital platforms. A Federal Election will see a huge spike in H1 as well.
Damien Healy, MiQ digital operations officer: There’s simply no denying the upheaval as digital and linear video opportunities continue to collide in the form of advanced TV and BVOD. There will be great opportunities for brands to unlock new, real-time, dynamic ways to enhance TV buying. We’ll see incredible competition and innovation in this space throughout 2022. TV is of course just another channel that’s digitising, and it’s joined by DOOH, digital audio, and pre-existing digital channels. Making sense of omnichannel measurement and activation will be another big, ongoing focus through 2022.
Philippa Noilea-Tani, Wavemaker chief investment officer: In 2022, TV must be redefined. We need to banish the word “linear”, and consider TV as a platform-agnostic broadcast channel, regardless of how, when or where content is consumed. 2021 has been a game-changing year for Television. The rise of ad-lite and ad-free platforms, the explosion in CTV ownership, and unsustainable CPM inflation fuelled by further audience fragmentation. For all this change, it’s important to note, that broadcast quality content has not lost its power, with exponential growth in BVOD audience and improvements made to the user and ad experience. The effectiveness of TV advertising has long been unrivalled, however, if we fail to evolve video strategies, sufficiency levels will be out of reach for many brands in 2022. To deliver exceptional ROI, we must foster platform-agnostic broadcast partnerships and adopt a data-driven audience first approach, with a focus on scaling media and content addressability across Total TV.
Ngita Bowers, Kaimera buying director: Advertising demand will increase, while viewership on TV declines. A pent up desire to travel combined with increased cash in the bank means people won’t be watching TV at the same levels they have in recently. Many advertisers are realising the need to balance brand building with activation. That means that more money typically spent in digital advertising will be reinvested into linear TV instead. We still don't know what to expect with the Winter Olympics, the Federal election, and how that will affect inventory next year and viewing. What we do know is that advertisers will fight for ad space, and networks will fight for efficiency. Subject to technical capabilities and accessibility, we see the uptake of Voz increasing to find that sweet spot for Bvod vs linear. However, the commercial realities dictate that linear will remain king. It was disappointing to see that with the continued declining audiences, the networks are still not taking risks with their programming. Another year of delivering the same franchises and genres. If linear TV wants to grow, they need to refresh their programming to more than just reality TV.
Michael Stanford, 10 ViacomCBS, head of 10 Imagine, national creative director: Consumers increasingly choose brands based on shared values. In 2022, how and why we choose companies to partner with in media and marketing will have the same level of attention and scrutiny. Given television’s influence on culture and the responsibility this entails, 10 ViacomCBS is committed to have a positive impact on society. Not to mention the values of our people, who also demand more from their employers. It's hard to attract tomorrow's talent if you are not holding yourselves to higher standards. Greater focus on diversity, equity and inclusion will lead to a shift in evaluation metrics. The way we reach audiences, our policies, and the intent of our content will become important factors in future partnerships. In 2022, prepare for the rise in responsibility and procurement with purpose.
John McNerney, Yahoo director of platforms: Header bidding for video is going to become mainstream in 2022, allowing for a far richer and liquid video marketplace for connectedTV. This will result in more demand to cater for the increasing audiences using catchup TV, with less of those pitfalls like blanks and back to back ads. Additionally, with ACR data becoming more available next year, the convergence of traditional and digital to understand incremental digital reach from TV audiences is going to see CTV budgets surge. This, coupled with header bidding, I predict we'll see a much healthier connected TV marketplace.
Luke Dickens, Lotame managing director: We all remember the “year of mobile” in the ad tech world, since it lasted over a decade. We should all expect CTV to dominate the headlines for the foreseeable future. And why not? Australia is leading the world in CTV ad spend growth, with more companies seeing the value of one of the fastest growing channels in digital advertising. More inventory will become available as identity and connectivity solutions come to the forefront. And praise be, no third-party cookies to battle over. Ever.
Adam Shalagin, AdUnion commercial director: The dialogue on TV will change in 2022 as BVOD becomes the main digital spend for many advertisers, and for some, outstripping traditional digital channels like Google. Streaming TV will hit a tipping point in 2022 and have a larger audience than linear on much of the tentpole programming by the end of the year. Budgets will not follow as quickly as advertisers have yet to catch up to the ever growing proportion of audience already moving. Analysis and insights will increasingly become more reflective of what you see through platforms such as Facebook. Legacy approaches to audience planning using traditional tools will be under pressure to evolve.
Sue Cant, Affinity head of media: 2022 will see the continuation of TV networks merging areas to deliver the dream world state of ‘total TV’. However, the key here is to have accurate measurement of catch up, something that’s currently lagging behind. As an example, VOZ has been a long time in the making, and the premise of it being able to bring together all broadcast viewing across TV sets and connected devices, for all-screen, cross-platform planning and reporting is a great one. There’s no doubt it has the strength to ultimately get there and deliver, but it needs the space and time to evolve – something we’re not sure it will have while networks run away creating a total TV proposition too quickly. Measurement needs to work hand in glove with network evolutions and tech enhancements, but it’s far from there currently.
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