INSIGHTanalysis: Media Healthcheck – August 2005
August saw a number of issues concerning the future of the television market, with predictions for the impact of new technologies within the arena and the effect that the expanding digital market place will have on advertisers.
The study found that the 8-14 year old audience gets “distracted” by other activities such as reading, listening to music, or surfing the internet while watching television (see Young Audiences Shift Interest From TV To Internet).
eMarketer’s latest US Digital TV report looked at the growing ways in which consumers can access television, claiming that by the end of this decade over half of all US households will be using advanced television services such as VOD and PVR functions (see The Changing Face Of TV).
Studies of these new technologies indicate that these new devices are changing TV viewing behaviour, with industry opinion believing that advanced television users are more likely to watch TV out of scheduled times and avoid more commercials. eMarketer states that if by 2010 half of households avoid 50% of all television commercials, then tens of billions of TV advertising money would be lost.
Another advance contributing to the changing face of the television industry is the advent of internet protocol television (IPTV); predicted to reach 25.9 million subscribers globally by the end of 2010, up from just 2.7 million at the end of 2005, according to Informa Telecoms & Media IPTV: A Global Analysis report (see IPTV To Reach 25.9 Million By 2010).
The study claims that China will be the leading IPTV market, with 4.9 million subscribers by the end of 2010. The US is forecast to be in second place, with 3.4 million, while Hong Kong, the leading country in 2004 with 475,000 subscribers, will drop to eighth position by 2010, having been overtaken by the UK with 1.5 million.
The switch from TV to other media is confirmed in a study by Ziff Davis Media, which found that video game players are watching less television, with one fourth claiming their pastime cuts into their TV consumption and a further 18% say they plan to reduce their viewing in the coming year (see Video Games Stealing TV Audiences).
With such a competitive market, advertisers are starting to look into and devise ways of directing adverts to their consumers, making use of the technological advances within television.
August saw US personal video recorder (PVR) manufacturer, TiVo, announce plans to employ technology in which commercials can’t be switched over, with the new device seeing a logo, phone number, or other “call to action” pop up in the right-hand corner of the screen, even if users choose to fast-forward through traditional commercials (see TiVo Reveals Adverts That Can’t Be Skipped Through).
Interactive TV advertising is also becoming increasingly important as an advertising mechanism, with research carried out by IDS finding that 69% of all respondents had used interactive advertising before, an 11% increase from the same time last year (see Interactive TV Advertising Increases In Importance).
The IDS report also found that 75% of respondents claim they will use the medium again, compared to 61% last year. Only 2% said they would not use interactive advertising again and another 2% said they don’t know.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International TV Festival, Dr Robert Pepper, senior managing director of global advanced technology policy at Cisco Systems discussed with delegates advances in technologies and the implications these had on the television industry (see Technology World Converging To Internet Protocol).
In particular, Pepper claimed that the shift from analogue to digital was resulting in the technology world beginning to “blur”, predicting that we are moving into a world of internet protocol, in which everything will be done over the internet.
Pepper stated that advances in broadband transmission have resulted in a convergence of media allowing broadband providers to offer users a triple play of services comprising voice, video and data.