An inconvenient truth?

The advertising and media industry’s best and brightest this week come together to talk about the future of television and, pointedly, measurement. You can bet that the debate at the Future of TV Advertising conference will be passionate, varied and unpredictable. 

The conversation around how we can measure the total video market – from TikTok to TenPlay, YouTube, Binge, Netflix and Amazon Prime, 9Now, Kayo and 7Plus – is intensifying, and there will be talk of set top boxes, IP addresses, hardware-specific CTV panels and other addressable inputs.  

And with topics like one-to-one storytelling, dynamic creative, personalisation, and AI all capturing the zeitgeist, one thing appears undeniable: the “post-linear golden age” of advertising is with us, and well, it’s bloody exciting. 

Except, of course, inconveniently, Samba released its H2 2023 data this week, which said average household reach of linear was flat year-on-year (at 50 per cent of households daily) and hours viewed were up. 

And Adgile released a study suggesting clients replacing linear TV with almost exclusively VOD and YouTube were seeing declines in search and web traffic after a few months. 

Both Les Binet and Peter Field have been active on stage and on Linkedin reaffirming the power of television for advertisers, and then there’s the gnarly problem that conservatively three times as many people see an advert on linear TV each day as see one on any BVOD or SVOD service (because whilst streaming is huge, ad supported streaming… not so much).

Real world numbers 

There are plenty of digital measurement opportunities, and our digital future is both inevitable and welcome, but in the present, they all kind of ignore the literal elephant in the room – the 10 million-plus people who watch linear TV every day.

It’s why OzTam built VOZ, a single source, panel based opportunity, extending the current robust, Gold Standard (and independent) TV measurement system, adding in digital video measurement across 16 million devices in and outside of the home, providing the ability to plan and measure cross-platform television campaigns on the most powerful screen in the home and beyond. 

It measures the total potential reach of TV programs, a huge step forward which seems to have created some angsty debate.  Which is a surprise, because we (rightly) don’t jump up and down about reporting the “potential reach” of digital platforms, and whilst we know Binge has hundreds of thousands of potential ad supported viewers, I’m not sure we know what the average audience of their ad funded product is (and I’m not sure we need to).

VOZ, of course, measures and reports on, what your ad spots delivered, by market and demographic (just like the old TAM system); it’s evolution not revolution.  But it will also give clients a view of the opportunity presented by BVOD in conjunction with linear TV from a single source.

And we all want VOZ to expand. KAYO, Binge, Foxtel Now are incredible products and add great opportunity for advertisers; as do Netflix, Prime, Disney and others and so they should be part of this.  

Even YouTube has specific products that are ‘television-like’, non-skippable, engaged ads in professionally produced content. I’d love to get them to join an independent, robust and Gold Standard measurement system that allows clients to look at their Total Video buy – I might defer to Karen Halligan and the board of OzTam on that one, though.

And of course we’d like clients to be able to buy all of that inventory, de-duped and frequency capped via VOZ Streaming, using their buying tech of choice, and complimentary to their linear TV schedule (not siloed from it) – but that’s another article in itself.

Single view, singular purpose

Change is inevitable, and we are all moving towards a digital-only future. But today, the change we need to see is the one where clients can embrace a full suite of television offerings – including the circa 80 per cent of ads that are viewed on linear – in a single view. It’s taken lean-in from broadcasters, agencies and third party service providers to get this far, but we’re nearly there.  

For clients who are looking for informed television marketing solutions, at scale, VOZ delivers in today’s television ecosystem. 

But to really put the client first, OzTAM will need to continue inviting new and different providers into the VOZ tent – and if those other providers really are putting the client first, they should definitely accept the invitation.