Recently there has been a rise in provoking articles hailing the death of television advertising as we know it. Once a supreme behemoth - cornering the advertising market and devouring the bulk of marketing budget - television's cut is still significant, but it is diminishing and evolving.
Other channels, notably digital are increasingly jostling for budget as audience viewing habits morph to suit on-demand platforms. Inevitably, increased audience fragmentation is occurring as new channels and devices are introduced to the equation, forcing brands and broadcasters to scrutinise consumer behaviour. Why? Because by understanding an audience's habits and motivations, brands can ensure better connections and create more personalised communications.
Enter Addressable Advertising
As modern consumers we're used to seeing adverts everywhere we go. Online and offline, from newspapers to posters, mail to television: advertising has been part of life for decades. Thanks to addressable advertising, as channels develop, the ads we're exposed to and the messages they contain are increasingly tailored to our unique preferences, lifestyles and needs.
Addressable advertising works by allowing marketers to pinpoint target audiences and create household profiles using data: on income, insurance renewal date, household composition, interests and behaviours etc. Working with TV operators, this data defines the number of addressable-enabled households that fit a target profile, meaning relevant ads can be served to profile-matched homes across multiple touchpoints.
Today's multiple touchpoints and smarter channels mean more varied audience data can be accessed and traded within the advertising industry than ever before – a perfect storm of consumer-tailored advertising that if part of a fully integrated strategy across channels promises to deliver exceptional results.
Consumer Ad Intolerance
But brands need to be aware that consumers are increasingly filtering out adverts, very often, subconsciously. We're exposed to thousands every day - adverts are being seen as an annoyance to a generation demanding uninterrupted content; though some appreciate premium content has to be paid for somehow. According to a recent Acxiom survey, 64% of consumers can't recall more than two television adverts they have seen within the last three days*. This highlights both the 'sea of sameness' ads have to cut through and the importance of relevance, to ensure the ad stands the best possible chance of resonating with the consumer.
Advert intolerance has led to the rise of services such as skipit, which allows consumers to pay to skip online video adverts with a single click - the majority of which aren't targeted, relevant, appealing or applicable to them. Again, further evidence that there is a cost for content, watch the ad or pay. But for marketers, surely the ability to serve personalised adverts for products and services that consumers have a higher propensity to purchase is preferable to an alienating, one-size fits all approach: a.k.a. current TV advertising?
Watching What the Watchers Watch
To avoid being ignored, brands, advertisers and broadcasters can use audience data to better serve interest-relevant material, and influence all activity from advertising to programming itself.
Factors other than how or what viewers watch are at play. The data created via online 'on demand' viewer accounts, social media, plus purchasing histories gives insight into how people act on what they watch, and how effective addressable advertising is. Social media, eCommerce and mCommerce are all directly linked to TV and advertising data.
Some TV ads are already aware of this social engagement potential. Brief, often obscure adverts that include hashtags for example spark intrigue. When placed between socially popular programmes, which also have their own hashtags and a large second screen viewer community, memorable social campaigns have the potential to make ignorable ads interesting - driving substantial engagement and revenue.
For example a viewer watching TV on their laptop, logged into their account, might make a mobile purchase in response to an ad, or engage socially with the content they're seeing. These factors and more allow the effectiveness of the tailored marketing they receive to be determined, then refined further.
Creating Memorable, Audience Targeted Campaigns
The onus is still very much on brands to deliver memorable campaigns. Although the potential for multichannel, multiscreen ad campaigns are there, if ads are not well targeted they will become noise, and fail to speak to fractured audiences with varied viewing habits and channel preferences.
Without insight, that 'right message, right time' moment is slim. To reach scattered viewers of value, broadcasters, advertisers and brands must understand multi-device consumers using audience data. Knowing what people watch, when, and the devices they prefer to access, establishes targeting opportunities for those in the ad and TV industry, leading to that 'phoenix' moment of better audience journeys, loyalty and trust.
*Statistics gathered from Acxiom's online survey questions based on 3,357 respondents.
By Matthew J Robinson, Marketing Communications Manager at Acxiom Corporation.
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