All media companies are exploring new ways to maximize the value of their live and on-demand content. In a complex landscape where broadcasters, sports, entertainment and technology players compete for market share, capturing and retaining global and hyperlocal audiences across multiple platforms is a vital challenge. Leveraging the right ad strategies to monetize content of all flavors is mission-critical for business growth.
The New Broadcast Advertising Landscape
Before connected TV devices, smartphones and the streaming media revolution, the linear television world relied on traditional broadcast advertising strategies targeting wide audiences across shared household TVs. In the absence of more targeted advertising capabilities, brands leveraged broader demographic data and panel-based audience measurement to determine whether ads would reach the right audiences. We’ve come a long way from the days when measurement was hard to come by and return on investment difficult to quantify.
The digital world has changed everything. Consumers can watch their preferred content anytime, anywhere and on any platform. Brands and digital advertisers have a whole host of advertising strategies at their disposal to target specific consumers based on their content consumption patterns—and they can shape their ad-buying decisions accordingly.
The value of traditional broadcast advertising is being questioned, with WARC research finding that 39% of marketers plan to reduce spending on linear channels. Consumers are increasingly favoring event-based viewing and on-demand streaming content experiences instead of traditional linear TV consumption, contributing to significant declines in pay-TV revenue, which will sink to $15 billion annually by 2027, according to PwC. Media consumption is changing and the linear methodologies many people are accustomed to simply don’t translate in the digital advertising arena. New thinking is needed to bridge diverse broadcast and digital environments.
Increase ROI With Strategic Targeting
Media organizations are looking to expand their reach by delivering market-relevant and localized content that resonates with viewers and boosts engagement. This opens the door for brands and advertisers to explore new ways to tap into these audiences in a more targeted and precise way—and make the most of their investment.
Digital advertising is driven by data that sheds light on consumers and their viewing habits. Brands and digital advertisers now have the consumer insights they need to make informed decisions about their advertising real estate.
This is particularly useful for brands that target narrow audiences with hyper-targeted regionalization, tailored messaging and coordination to increase their chances of getting their messages to resonate with target buyers. Although this type of strategic targeting comes with a premium price tag, it should be seen as a worthwhile investment.
A Digital Mindset for Linear Channels
Media companies can uplevel their broadcast advertising strategies by adopting a digital advertising mindset for their linear channels. Customization and hyperlocalization can be critical competitive advantages that enable broadcast advertising to transition to the digital world and bring back much-needed investment. Content distributors with the infrastructure in place to support digital ad sales can apply their digital framework to their linear channels, creating compelling offerings that deliver similar value to digital ad packages.
This mindset requires a shift in approach from selling air time to impressions, which is commonplace in digital advertising. By seamlessly implementing impression-based broadcast advertising and digital models within the same hybrid ecosystem, they can offer brands and advertisers ad packages across digital and linear channels — optimizing content monetization and streamlining siloed ad processes.
Hitting Linear and Digital Advertising Targets
Today, media organizations are finding ways to grow their digital businesses while protecting and maximizing ROI on high-value linear channels and live events. Broadcasters with hybrid digital and linear offerings need to maximize the value of their content libraries by increasing reach and monetization potential. Innovation in IP video distribution and content versioning enables media organizations to produce highly regionalized content that targets multiple linear and digital markets simultaneously — without heavy costs or additional resources.
By intelligently creating and inserting multiple versions of SCTE-35 markers, it’s also easier than ever for media companies to enrich the downstream ad experience for any region, audience, or platform.
Broadcast advertising is not going anywhere — it is evolving. By harnessing the targeting capabilities typically associated with on-demand streaming, new broadcast advertising models can increase ROI and drive growth for broadcasters. As the volume of high-value content produced, delivered, and consumed through the event-based model increases, the new phase of digitally-inspired broadcast advertising will begin to deliver measurable results.
