Put your swimsuit on
James Grant, UK country manager, Vindico, says consumers are moving faster than the industry and those who expect ‘little change’ to influence traditional TV advertising by the time the Olympics in Rio come around are going to get caught out…
It wasn’t that long ago when you walked into a high-street shop, looked at the screens on the shelves, bought the best one you could afford for your budget and tripped off home to plug it in and watch programmes from one of five channels. When you got bored on Christmas Day, you added a set top box, from one of a number of suppliers, and handed over your bank details again.
That situation is drastically different now. My television alone can offer me more content than I’m capable of watching. It has 30+ channels dialed in automatically, it has a ‘smart’ area where pre-chosen brands try to showcase me their content AND I can connect it up to the web in order to find my own content.
That’s without getting started on the number of boxes I can throw money at in order to get more content pushed onto my big screen. In fact, even though I work in the industry I can honestly say it’s all a bit over-whelming… I’m more often than not inclined to hand the TV over to the my son’s Fireman Sam DVD and just get on with my own content choices on a generic tablet device.
And therein lies the issue – people are buying the devices to consume the content, but we are struggling to properly monetise the interest. A report out this week from Deloitte indicates that targeted and interactive TV advertising will not have a significant impact on the current TV marketplace in the next five years.
On top of this the UK video industry is still reluctant to implement IAB video standards, which are commonplace in more advanced markets such as the US. And let’s not get started on common media currencies.
Yet amidst all the treading water in the current environment it’s clear that consumer habits are changing… and fast. Netflix, Amazon, Tesco and now Sky have all announced significant moves in the online TV/film content distribution space in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, Apple has sold more iPads in two years than it sold Macs in 21, and connected televisions continue to quietly gain share with another 1% of our homes added in December.
Consumers are changing the way they access, watch and share content on their small screens and their big screens, and it is exciting! I can now genuinely watch what I want, when I want it, where and how I like, and the best thing is that I know I’m not the only one in ad-land currently walking the walk.
As an industry we should be pushing industry standards, and educating and encouraging innovation. Consumers are moving faster than the industry and those who expect ‘little change’ to influence traditional TV advertising by the time the Olympics in Rio come around, are, I suspect, going to get caught out. As Warren Buffet once said: “When the tide goes out you get to see who has been caught swimming naked”.
We need to push for change across the marketplace and I think the adoption of IAB video standards is a good place to start – maybe we can still avoid baring all and sundry to our marketplace friends and foes.