No more playing catch up?

Online marketing consultant Leon Bailey-Green asks if ITV and Channel 4 should remove catch up TV adverts.

Tuesday, 2 December 2008

As Sky +, Freeview Plus, BBC iPlayer and PVRs grow in popularity, the idea of uninterrupted TV on demand continues to grow. ITV’s online Catch Up service and Channel 4’s Watch Online contain adverts in between programmes with ITV also showing banner adverts on pages.

In my opinion ITV and Channel 4 should aim to fund their service with sole sponsors for each programme.

Channel 4’s Come Dine With Me is sponsored by Nescafe’s Dolce Gusto, but that didn’t stop them showing an advert for rival Kenco during the free catch up service – hampering effectiveness for both parties? I think so. If I were the brand manager of Dolce Gusto I’d be none too pleased.

Two experts in online advertising Simon Stone and Fiza Khan, and the IAB, give me their opinion on adverts in catch up TV services, and whether they think it’s viable to have sole sponsors.

Simon Stone

Commercial Director, Web TV Enterprise

Surely viewers would rather watch a short one minute ad break (usually 2 x 30 second ads back to back) rather than paying for the programmes they watch? All the broadcasters are doing is replicating the tried and trusted TV model which will work as long as:

a) The time-length of the ad break is in relation to the length of the content.
b) The ads are targeted and relevant to people watching that particular programme.
c) The ads are frequency capped so that the same person doesn’t keep seeing the same ad over and over again every time they go to a particular VOD portal.

Pre-rolls work well (especially for advertisers, as viewers have to watch them to get the content) but that should be enough in terms of advertising; there shouldn’t be ads in between the programmes.

Also, I agree that if a programme is sponsored by a category of product - eg Nescafe - a rival brand such as Kenco shouldn’t be able to run their ad in the same break as this just confuses the viewer and detracts away from the value of the advertiser’s sponsorship deal.

Fiza Khan

Commercial Manager, OSOYOU

I think broadcasters need to tread carefully here, this model may have worked in the past for TV, but in today's world of Sky+, users are increasingly becoming used to skipping through ads.

Viewers will increasingly become frustrated with what they perceive as multiple 'interruptions' in their viewing.

At present pre-roll ads do little to take advantage of the interactivity of the medium - the effectiveness of such placements will remain hindered until this is addressed.

Kieron Matthews

Marketing Director, IAB

The reality of terrestrial TV advertising is that you are limited to ad breaks and sponsorship idents. For years advertisers have been used to these parameters and as such have built both their ad delivery systems and sales teams around this model. If sales teams are split between digital and terrestrial (and they often are) you will continue to see exclusive TV deals being compromised online such as the Kenco example.

It therefore comes as no surprise that existing advertising methodologies have been adopted online. However we know that online is a completely different beast and therefore needs bespoke solutions. By adopting this model it allows media owners to provide tailored advertising solutions driven by the audience watching, the type of content and the length of footage etc. So I don’t buy a sponsorship only model because this might suit a certain TV programme and demographic, but not another. Bespoke and relevant solutions can potentially improve the chances of your audience engaging with your message.

Current consumers are incredibly savvy about marketing and often understand the correlation between advertising funding programmes. Consumers are prepared for this trade off, but media owners need to be conscious of not compromising this relationship. Simon is right to talk about the length of ad versus the length of content – in fact it forms the basis of the IAB video guidelines. More intelligence is needed to get this balance right, though I have no doubt consumers will let us know. Interestingly, revenues per capita are higher from subscriptions than they are to advertising sales.

We must not forget that online ad delivery in video is only two years old, so plenty more needs to be done in understanding what works and what doesn’t.