Page 23 - Adnews magazine Sep-Oct 2022

COVID a gift
Sydney trading director for UM, Lorena Chiarella, points out that COVID successfully encouraged audiences to become more familiar with new technology, in particular how to consume streaming content, whether that be BVOD on mobile, BVOD on Connected TV or YouTube on Connected TV.
“Even my father has become an avid YouTube watcher on the big screen and that’s saying something,” she says.
What this means for television, she says, is the plethora of content out there is able to be consumed in many more ways. “For linear TV, it will mean a continued decline of audiences across many genres of content, for example drama and comedy, but BVOD across all devices will continue to see growth.”
The VOZ data is clearly highlighting this trend, she says. “Audiences for tentpole programming remain relatively stable, with a continued shift of linear audiences to BVOD.”
For example, the percentage make-up of reality programs such as Married At First Sight this year averaged roughly 30% BVOD contribution against P24-25 (VOZ, Week 6-15, 2022), she points out.
“I say some genres because there are still appointment-to-view pro- grams that will continue to dominate on linear TV such as live sport and news programming. These programs will continue to be a stable for advertiser campaigns to generate strong reach for their screens asset.”
“As a result, with the demand in market from advertisers for quality programming, coupled with the steady audience declines of the more efficient programming available to buy, inflation on television will likely continue to be double digits for some time to come, particularly for the younger demographics,” she says.
“Advertisers are investing more in screens as a channel due to the fragmentation of audiences across platforms since we now need to buy across multiple channels to essentially capture the same level of audience that once was available to be captured purely on linear TV.”
One factor to consider that may drive down the cost of BVOD is the impending entry of SVOD players such as Netflix and Disney+ into the world of advertising, meaning the major networks will now be competing for budgets against platforms that have larger audiences than they do.
“With more advertising inventory available across streaming plat- forms, we will see a rapid trajectory of growth for Connected TV in par- ticular,” she says.
As a result of the increase in the price of linear television as well as the fragmentation of audiences across platforms, sponsorships of programs
The Voice. Bruce McAvaney. Dancing with the Stars
and live sport have become more valuable to the advertiser, allowing them to embed themselves into the content, and therefore be present to the viewer no matter where the content is being consumed.
Advertiser demand strong
Managing director of media at Enigma, Justin Ladmore, says lin- ear TV drives awareness and an emotional connection. “You just don’t get the same result using VOD by itself,” he says.
“Viewing across different screens has become seamless, but the advertising isn’t. Brands have the expectation that they deliver the same result, but they don’t. We’re all still trying to understand what best practice, cross platform TV buying looks like and
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