Channel 4 to relaunch streaming offering as it doubles down on digital strategy
Channel 4 is to relaunch its streaming proposition for advertisers this year, with an eye towards attracting small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by simplifying its ad buying platform and exploring ways in which AI can support brands in the TV ad production chain.
“It’s about simplifying how you buy TV,” Barry John, head of operations at Channel 4 Sales, told The Media Leader ahead of Channel 4’s Extravagander event last week.
“What we don’t want to replicate is some of the legacy complexity in buying our linear products.”
In 2026, Channel 4’s streaming platform will also be refreshed to offer an improved user experience.
“The truth is that our little green button that we’re really proud of has sort of reached the end of its life,” technology director Grace Boswood told The Media Leader.
As part of redeveloping the “heavy plumbing” of the streaming app, the broadcaster will also be looking to develop new personalisation options for users, as well as reconsider the ad load of its streaming service.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 will focus on delivering AI-supported innovations to help new-to-TV advertisers streamline the production process, such as through AI tools that will aid ideation, scripting and storyboarding — but not the final creative product itself.
Competing with platforms…
Broadcasters have increasingly sought to go after the long tail of advertisers (in particular, the “fat end of the long tail”) in order to grow TV’s adspend pie.
Commercial leaders view the opportunity for business growth as significant. As ITV’s commercial managing director Kelly Williams said at LEAD earlier this month: “The long tail that everyone talks about is bloody long. It’s gigantic.”
Comcast Advertising president James Rooke argued at December’s Future of TV Advertising Global event that, to attract new-to-TV advertisers, TV needs to “embrace the Big Tech playbook” by simplifying the buying process.
This is now what Channel 4 is set on doing.
For Channel 4, the ability to make it easier for brands of all sizes to buy TV ads will help level the playing field with tech platforms. According to Ewan Douglas, its head of sales and business development, despite research suggesting TV remains a highly effective media channel and that it is being undervalued compared with social media, there has remained difficulty in “translating [it] directly into investment dollars”.
“I think the tech platforms have done a great job of over-attributing the performance of their products and putting that in front of the CFOs of big businesses,” Douglas told The Media Leader. “They’re showing the attribution and benefits of other people’s work, effectively.”
Platforms have taken an enlarged share of media budgets in part because of how easy it is to spend money with them. As ad technology leader Charlie Glyn explained, advertisers are basing their marketing decisions around ease of use, rather than effectiveness.
“Rather than [advertisers] being like ‘Your booking platform is easy, therefore I will choose to spend with you’ — that shouldn’t be powering a decision for what goes into your marketing mix,” she added.
In January, Comcast announced Universal Ads, a cross-industry ad solution aimed at allowing advertisers of all sizes to buy against premium video “as easily as they buy from social media platforms”.
Channel 4, which uses Comcast’s FreeWheel as an ad-serving platform, is “actively” looking at collaborating on initiatives like Universal Ads in the near future, according to John.
Douglas added, in reference to Universal Ads: “Why wouldn’t you get involved in that?”
Webb (centre) and Mitchell (right) announced a return to sketch comedy at Extravagander
…but also working with them
As much as Channel 4’s sales staff is keen to compete against platforms for a bigger share of ad revenue, the broadcaster has also taken a friendly positioning to them by increasingly uploading its content to YouTube and TikTok.
In the second half of this year, Channel 4 will be expanding its targeting proposition for advertisers via YouTube with “next-generation” postcode targeting and interest-based targeting.
The platform strategy has drawn concern from analysts like Ian Whittaker, who has argued that TV is “falling into the newspaper trap” by giving its content away for free and, in the process, devaluing its own proposition.
Currently, around 30% of Channel 4’s revenue comes from digital sources and Douglas told The Media Leader that the ambition is to get that proportion to 50% by 2030 as part of the broadcaster’s wider Fast Forward initiative.
In its latest earnings from 2023, Channel 4 total revenue dropped 10% to £1.02bn, driven primarily by a double-digit (16%) decline in linear ad revenue; digital revenue increased 10% to £280m.
Douglas suggested that linear audiences and investment are declining at a slower rate than many analysts anticipated, giving broadcasters “runway” to work towards what he views as an inevitable post-linear future.
However, monetising content posted on platforms has not been a simple task. CEO Alex Mahon has admitted that it “can be a little problem”; Channel 4 News’ TikTok content, for instance, is “not making money”.
That said, Rak Patel, who joined Channel 4 at the start of the year as the broadcaster’s new chief commercial officer, called it “an incredible strategy”.
He noted that a key challenge will be to bring along marketers and finance chiefs into the “multidimensional way of consumption” as what is defined as “TV” continues to merge with streaming and social platforms.
When pushed on whether Channel 4 will be able to sufficiently monetise on these platforms, Patel said: “Our role here is to ensure that content of all types that we’re commissioning from the UK ecosystem is being viewed by as many audiences as possible. That’s really, really important.
“My team’s role is to make sure that we’re commercialising those areas that make sense to commercialise — those areas which allow us to build out a business.”
‘The money looks after itself’
In response to the concern that advertisers could move their spend directly to the platforms now that high-quality content from broadcasters is available there for free, Patel suggested that Channel 4’s brand is “implicitly trusted” and therefore of greater value to marketers.
“Trust is the critical thing — whether it’s YouTube, whether it’s TikTok or any other platform,” he said. “What viewers will need is trust in order for them to take an action. Whether it’s on a big screen running through linear, whether it’s on social, that implicit trust is there.”
Fatima Dowlet, head of streaming and social propositions, added: “You’ve got to accept that audiences are migrating and they’re consuming media in totally different ways now. You’ve got to follow where your audience is going and you can’t be as naive to think that you can just stay in one position for the rest of your broadcast career and think the audiences will come to you.”
Channel 4 has only been on its “social sales journey” for a little over two years, and Dowlet and Patel will be tasked with accelerating commercialisation efforts to meet the broadcaster’s Fast Forward goals.
For Patel, it’s ultimately a simple task, especially as the broadcaster unveiled a new content slate last week that features a new five-part drama from Russell T Davies and a return to sketch comedy from David Mitchell and Robert Webb.
“How can we make sure those stories are told in the best of ways across all of our different platforms?” Patel asked. “If that happens, then the money looks after itself.”