By Raihan Hadi & Jamie West
The power of the consumer in the digital world today cannot be confined within a frame. With an increased awareness for privacy coupled with the need for personalisation – media and content producers are pressed with the need to step outside the comfort zone and adapt to the continuously maturing behaviour of their audiences.
As opposed to how things were prior to the digital revolution in media, society is evolving in the ways that they consume media and TV in particular. The pace has only picked up in lightyear speed especially with media now having many different faces through which it is consumed.
And as consumer behaviours change, so must marketing strategies applied by service providers. TV now falls into the most challenging category of all because of the evolution in streamables (plus devices).
With the age of personalisation now reaching even higher levels, consumers increasingly expect a curated and enhanced experience from both advertising as well as viewing and content experiences, the latter being the key factor for advertisers to consider in their playbook.
Is TV Back in Demand?
There used to be a time when entertainment was synonymous with watching your favourite shows on the telly – sitcoms, talk shows, news, movies, documentaries – you name it. Advertisers were also able to buy slots for showing their ads during these programmes, albeit considering the mass.
With the introduction of the various mediums to watch content, the challenge of retaining viewership and the time they spend on watching TV became exponentially greater, that is until evolution caught up to it along with that of user experience, making it as advanced as any other medium over the past decade.
That being said, advertisers are now embracing TV ever so dearly once again given the introduction of addressable advertising by some of the biggest players in the field.
Why Addressable Makes Sense
While mass targeting on TV has historically been the only solution for advertisers, we now know and understand that with addressable advertising, it isn’t the case anymore.
With addressable advertising, advertisers and brands can now select the most relevant combination of attributes to create their audience, and ensure that they show relevant ads to relevant households accordingly, thus optimising campaign delivery.
This might sound potentially scary for privacy whizzes, but you can rest assured that unlike most other mediums consumers use to view content, Addressable Advertising on TV is currently highly secure in terms of privacy.
RIP Mass Marketing?
Not really, TV still has a very important role to play to use mass marketing campaigns in building brand fame, to launch and introduce new brands to market and this will continue long into the future.
However with the launch of addressable advertising, TV at present not only has the capability of delivering mass targeted or fame building campaigns, but also serving the niche and targeted brand or campaigns as well.
Using precision technology, data and insight will help optimise campaigns, along with targeting the mass, or even execute the brand fame building campaigns much easier than ever.
This means that TV advertising can now be relevant to a much wider pool of brands whether they are:
• A niche in the target market
• Emerging brands
• Local brands
• Campaigns targeting customers by value or other metrics with different messages
• Showing different ads to lapsed vs. active customers
And the day isn’t far away, when using first party data linking TV campaigns to digital
campaigns. For example advertisers will be able to create segments of customers who previously exited an online store without purchasing, and targeting them with a TV campaign.
As a result of these types of capabilities, TV will be capable of catering to all levels of the marketing funnel and compete with all forms of competitive media simultaneously.
The English Experience in Addressable
In the UK, AdSmart successfully converted thousands of New to TV brands to be ongoing users of addressable whether they be high end finance brands such as Blackrock, premium auto manufacturers Porsche, McLaren and Maserati, or at the other end of the scale local tradesmen, regional car dealerships, or even local charities and foster care services.
Of course, whilst the return rate of advertisers is a good barometer of performance, the real benchmark is measuring effectiveness, whereby the beauty of addressable advertising is that because each household is known, it creates the ability to create genuine return on investment and effective measurement capability.
At Sky, by ensuring there are control groups within any measured campaign, an advertiser can apply sales, engagement, interaction metrics to exposed households – in order to truly understand the impact or the effect created by addressable campaigns.
The Malaysian Case Study
Since the roll-out of Astro Addressable Advertising across Video On Demand on Astro GO, Ultra and Ulti Boxes during November 2021, many big and emerging brands have adopted it and garnered positive brand lift results.
Astro has commissioned an independent research company to conduct a Brand Lift Study using online quantitative methodology for 3 campaigns across different product categories, namely personal care, telco service provider and online delivery.
The reports have proven that addressable advertising has managed to improve ad impact and effectiveness at a notable scale, achieving higher brand awareness, greater ad recall and stronger purchase intent. On top of the positive results, the study has also highlighted opportunities for brands to use the data points for expansion onto the next campaign to maximise returns.
While Addressable Advertising may still be a relatively new topic in the region, the scope of work remains vast, and with a player like Astro changing the game, there is much to be seen while advertisers make the U-turn towards TV to take their consumers back to the future.
To find out more about addressable advertising in Malaysia, join the Addressable Future event by Astro, click here.
“Step outside the box – Turning to Addressable TV to keep up with shifting consumer behaviour” was first published on MARKETING WEEKENDER Issue 333
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The APPIES is an annual event that presents a rare opportunity for creative, media, digital and marketing agencies or brands to present their best campaigns to the industry.
This is the only event where Live Presentations meets Live Judging.
Similar to TED Talks, The APPIES is the chance for great presenters with outstanding work to show it off to some of the industry’s most important industry leaders.
This year’s winners will receive Gold, Silver or Bronze trophies for 21 categories, and 6 special Best of Best categories (red trophies) that require no submissions!
Campaign entries must have run between June 2023 to May 2024
Submissions Deadline
30th June 2024
APPIES Festival – Judging & Presentations
11th – 12th July 2024 (Malaysia)
