TV ads look for an audience

The Future. As the entertainment industry undergoes a digital transformation, their advertising playbook might be in need of a refresh. Gone are the days of flipping between four networks and a few cable channels to find your audience, but that might be a good thing. Advertisers may now have the opportunity to invest in marketing that either reaches a large part of culture or targets niché communities.

Money with too many places to go
The advertising industry is trying to figure out where to park $60 billion worth of marketing in a content ecosystem that is more fractured than ever.

• Audiences are now stretched across big networks, cable channels, premium streaming services, and ad-supported streamers.
• When there are more avenues to capture eyeballs, it means ad-inventory must be stretched thin to find them all.

Additionally, a revolt against Nielsen — the go-to audience measurement tool for years — is sowing confusion on what audiences are actually watching. While Nielsen tries to win back industry trust, newer players like Comscore and VideoAmp are swooping in.

Two tales
As the industry transitions, what do advertisers do with all this demand? THR says the best bet is for them to take a “two-pronged approach.”

• Invest half in event-driven programming like sports programming and award shows that capture a lot of eyeballs at once.
• Invest the other half in video-on-demand services that excel at targeting ads to audiences and subscribers.

Cross Screen Media CEO Michael Breach says that the current transition phase to all things streaming will ultimately be good for advertisers: “It is going to take a couple years, but the first battle for the existing group is to keep the audience in their ecosystem. None of them are doing a great job at that.”

And how do you keep audiences in your ecosystem? According to Kevin Krim, CEO of data firm EDO, “It is inevitable that quality TV programming is going to be one of the best places to advertise into the distant future.”