Brands must be attentive to how TV content is viewed, measured – Donato
By Felicia Nwosu
Paul Donato, Chief Research Officer at the Advertising Research Foundation, has submitted that as brands spend more in connected TV, they must pay closer attention to how it is viewed and measured. He said this on LinkedIn while taking a look at latest the research on the changing face of US TV viewership.
According to him, while ad spend is projected to decrease in 2023 due to a confluence of macroeconomic factors, investment in CTV (connected TV) is still expected to see double-digit growth, and the increased ad spend will need to be accompanied by increased focus on media and measurement.
The media expert cited Interactive Advertising Bureau, IAB’s 2023 Outlook Survey, which projected that, CTV ad spend will climb to 14.4 percent of overall ad spend in 2023.It also states that this jump comes as the streaming’s share of total US TV time surpassed cable for the first time ever back in July, according to data from Nielsen.
“As more advertisers invest in internet video and CTV while also continuing to spend even if it’s less on linear TV, more than half aim to focus somewhat or significantly more on cross-platform measurement. This goal dovetails with the latest research from the Advertising Research Foundation’s annual Data Analytivs for DASH (Universe Study of Device and Account Sharing) study, which shows how increased viewing time spent on streaming TV, newer types of access to linear TV and other factors continue to alter TV viewing”.
He urged brands to rethink their concept of ‘television households’ while revealing some findings from the most recent DASH data set.
“Traditional television households have typically been defined as those with at least one working television set. However, viewing media consumption in this way leaves out a meaningful amount of TV viewing by individuals who watch TV only on mobile devices, including computers. Our latest DASH data shows that more than 5% of U.S. households do not own a television set, but it’s not because they’ve sworn off media or technology. In fact, 80% of these very households do have broadband and nearly half watch TV on their devices. As with many things in our current digital media landscape, younger Gen Z and millennial consumers – who live in smaller households and are twice as likely as older viewers not to own a television – are driving this trend. Drilling down further, half of households without TV sets access TV only through broadband internet, also known as BBO (Broadband Only) homes. DASH data shows that BBO grew from 25% in the summer of 2021 to 30% in the spring of 2022, including in those households without a TV set. When we consider this data, we support a slow shift away from the concept of ‘television households’ to ‘TV-accessible households’ as the basis of TV measurement.
He explained the lack of equal opportunity or loyalty for TV sets and the different ways in which the same household accesses programming on different TV sets have created measurement challenges.
“DASH data shows that only 21% of Pay TV households have a set-top box on every TV, with the remaining households possessing at least one TV hooked into a different programming menu. For example, 33% of Pay TV households have broadband connected to at least one TV, and 14% of these have YouTube TV on at least one television, giving them access to two modes of linear viewing. What’s more, not all these TVs are the same brand, which produces other measurement blockers: DASH data shows that 86% of households with one Vizio TV, for instance, have other TVs from other brands. Even households with two Vizio TVs have other brands present in 70% of cases. Having a more granular picture of the universe of TV sets and connectivity within individual households can help measurement teams calibrate viewership data to be more representative of the total audience.
He affirmed that new realities have also changed the mode of consumption of contents by families from what it used to be.
“Once upon a time, families gathered around the television together during primetime (yes, often with a TV dinner in front of them). Blame technology, overscheduled kids and both parents working outside the home, potentially for longer hours, and the result is families consuming their media on different devices at different times. Perhaps this is why primetime co-viewing is actually higher in two-person households than in larger families.
Donato noted that streaming penetration held steady in 2022, but changes are afoot, while the streaming wars seemed to declare a ceasefire in the back half of 2022 with consumer adoption of new services waning.
“Disney, for one, is raising prices to try to make its various streaming services profitable, as is Netflix, which is also attempting to stop password sharing (previous DASH data shows over a third of Americans share account access with family and friends). Other providers are abandoning programming, and everyone is expanding their ad-supported offerings. All of this will shift dynamics in 2023.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Comment
No comments found.