The Big TV Festival: ‘TV is not dead, TV is having fucking babies’
ITV, Channel 4 and Sky plan to collaborate “much more” in future to “take the fight to digital”, a panel featuring the UK’s three biggest commercial broadcasters has heard.
Speaking at the Big TV Festival, Sky Media’s Dev Sangani said there would be more innovation and collaboration from the broadcasters, which just last week had begun rolling out a trial version of measurement platform CFlight.
Sangani, Sky Media’s capability and strategy director, said: “We’re going to have to be doing much more because we’re going to take the fight to digital much more working together and we’re going to see some cool stuff out of that.”
He also stressed the importance of measurement in combatting uncertainty around TV inflation when talking to clients, and that TV generated 60% of short-term returns, which is often under-estimated when compared to its abilities in long-term brand-building.
The Big TV Festival, hosted by commercial TV trade body Thinkbox, brought together the rival commercial broadcasters Sky, Channel 4 and ITV to make the positive case for TV advertising.
Despite being competitors, the demand from advertisers for a single measurement standard for digital and linear TV has led to the three companies producing CFlight as a joint venture. The three companies even launched a joint marketing campaign alongside the BBC for the first time in 2020.
The event, held in Sherwood Forest, invited 10 guests from each commercial broadcaster in attendance and agencies were asked to send their “rising stars” – those who had been working for three to four years and were “making a name for themselves”, along with select brands.
Combined with the tepees and unpredictable weather (snow, sleet, hail, and sunshine in the space of a few hours) the event had a youth-oriented festival feel, with flags and (later on) glitter, music, drinks and food trucks.
It also provided a forum to discuss TV’s challenges, such as inflation, incoming high fat, sugar and salt regulation in January 2023 and the impact of gaming attracting younger audiences, which were raised by the “thorny” questions posed from both the audience and interviewers throughout the sessions.
Declining audiences, especially among younger generations, is also a major concern for broadcasters and advertisers which was brought home at the event compered by X Factor and I’m A Celebrity…’s Fleur East and Made in Chelsea’s Sam Thompson who several delegates did not initially recognise because they, in their words, do not own or “really watch TV”.
What is the future of TV?
Pippa Glucklich, CEO of independent media agency Electric Glue, chaired the panel provocatively named: ‘What is the future of TV?’ with Sangani, Verica Djurdjevic, chief revenue officer at Channel 4, and Kelly Williams, managing director at ITV Commercial.
The group argued that the future of TV advertising includes increased collaboration between the broadcasters to compete with streaming, addressability and “shopability” options and cross-platform measurement.
On the innovation side, Sangani teased upcoming developments to Sky Glass, Sky’s custom-made TV set, over the next year. He could not specify what these might be but did say that the new features would “revolutionise TV advertising”.
Sangani also mentioned ITVX, “intensifying” contextual targeting on Sky Adsmart, fixed price sponsorship and “shopability” capabilities with QR codes and “fast deliverables” (ordering popcorn via your TV screen while watching a film, for example) as major innovations to watch out for over the next year.
Williams initially described the three ages of TV, the first age being when he first joined the industry 34 years ago when there were four channels, then the second age as multi-channel TV with “an explosion” of new channels and platforms and now a third age of streaming and on-demand.
He stressed the importance of TV “evolving and adapting” creatively, technologically and commercially throughout these ages of TV and told delegates regarding the medium’s future: “What’s going to happen in the next five to 10 years is TV is going to transition. Up until now we’ve delivered TV on the whole through a satellite or cable or free-to-broadcast TV; we’re going to deliver TV via the internet and that opens up opportunities for advertising, for data, for addressability.”
He highlighted technological innovations in addressability and targeting, whether that be weather-based, contextual or regional, particularly on video-on-demand and the upcoming ITVX service launching later this year as well as Planet V and Sky Adsmart innovations.
Williams added: “TV is the most effective media. Reach scales by emotional engagement and it’s about trust, brand safety, big screens and the multiplier effect of TV. TV drives search results, social performance and web business.”
When asked about battling uncertainty with TV inflation and having difficult conversations with clients about reach and frequency, Djurdjevic commented: “How cheap or expensive something is depends on what you’re comparing it to, and in real terms, in fact, the cost of TV is cheaper than it has been for the last five years. But of course, it’s inflated versus the cost last year, which for all of you is making your life very, very difficult. And the reality is actually that most audiences are holding up pretty well.”
She suggested going back to a “fundamental” planning perspective, weighing up the breadth or specific segment of targeting a campaign.
“In some instances, it might be about taking part of the campaign and building a foundation there and then how do you actually test and learn different things on top of it, which you can now do obviously with those different targeting opportunities,” Djurdjevic said.
“[This] will give you a different blend that may answer your advertiser’s need and may also link to increased effectiveness. That straight line between budgets and effectiveness will look different in the future because of those different capabilities that will come into the products that we can offer to you.”
Going back to the question of effectiveness or efficiency and rising TV prices, she asked: “Do you want something that is contextually relevant that drives fame, even if it’s more expensive than it was last year? Would you have half of the ratings you thought you were going to get or over 100% of the Facebook views that may be differently contextually viewed and not viewed in a shared environment?”
She added that creating content and innovating environments to pull in large volumes of younger viewers in “digital ways” will be fundamental to TV’s success moving forward.
TV as a force for good and new to TV advertisers
One sentence that got the biggest laugh and was a talking point for many delegates was ITV Commercial’s deputy director Simon Daglish, who kicked off proceedings on the first day by saying: “TV is not dead, TV is having fucking babies”.
These “babies” could easily refer to “the golden age” of content, but Daglish attributed a lot of this to TV’s emotional pull and the new ways of watching TV making it “utterly ubiquitous”, in your pocket, on the train, or in your living room.
He pointed out broadcaster TV still dominates the video advertising market making up 87% of video advertising people see each day.
According to BARB data that Daglish highlighted, a campaign in one day on TV would reach 66% of people in the UK, a campaign lasting one week would reach 86% and one month 95%, or nearly everyone in the UK.
Daglish also pointed to a Radiocentre and Ebiquity study which still showed TV as the number one medium in the UK and even said “if you do not believe me, believe the BBC” before playing a clip from Dragon’s Den where a company pitching their product had used TV advertising to more than double their sales in a year and effectively pay for the ad in its entirety.
The rest of the festival centred on the themes of culture, commerce, and creativity, touching on television’s ability to drive reach, emotion, short-term results, long-term brand-building, and affect social change, behaviour and culture.
Sessions from Rory Sutherland, vice-president of Ogilvy, talking about everything from behavioural psychology to Japanese toilets and rogue bees, and Alex Brooker, co-host of Channel 4’s The Last Leg, discussing representation and inclusion of people with disabilities in advertising, were particularly well-received by delegates, judging by the laughs and applause heard in the room.
Panels on TV as a force for good, from driving awareness and triggering positive behaviour change to fundraising, and strategies from new-to-TV advertisers with smaller budgets provided food for thought.
In these sessions, ITV’s recent two-hour concert for Ukraine, which raised over £14m, Channel 4’s “Super Humans” campaign for the Paralympics and Sky’s Net Zero initiatives were highlighted along with the boom in online-born businesses taking to and, crucially, staying on TV in the pandemic.