Surprise package?

The purge of top executives earlier this year at Seven is still unsettling nerves in the advertising market but it’s product innovation and content are looking in better shape than its commercial position – for now. 

Long considered to lack a key SVOD service in its portfolio – Foxtel, Paramount and Nine all have them to counter the international streaming assault – Seven has turned to 7Plus as the workhorse to battle both its traditional broadcast rivals and the new TV breed in streaming. If its assessment on the impact new digital AFL and cricket rights starting over summer and premium international first run content for the younger set prove true, it might just surprise a tentative ad market. 

“It’s a radical reframing,” Seven Group Managing Director, Television, Angus Ross told Mi3. “We haven't had any streaming, any premium sports streaming on the platform outside the Brownlow and the AFL Grand Final. What you're going to get is 52 weeks a year of sports streaming matches and ancillary programming around that.” 

The veteran TV programmer is also upbeat after the LA Screenings this year saw the end of the Hollywood writers strike and the strongest line-up of premium content in years. Between premium VOD content, new sports digital rights and its personalisation plans, Seven’s Managing director, Digital, Gereurd Roberts, said audiences and minutes viewed on 7Plus would be up 20-25 per cent next year and would nab six share points from Nine and Ten-Paramount’s online platforms.

“At the moment, we see an additional 4.2 billion minutes a year, which is probably between 20 per cent and 25 per cent additional,” he told Mi3. “We're calling it around an additional five to six sharepoints coming from sport alone, and an increase of between 20 and 25 per cent in daily active users."

Outside of its digital sports rights, premium VOD has proven a hot spot for Seven in attracting younger viewers to first run international content – 45 per cent of daily users on 7Plus come in only for exclusives. “They’re younger and they're coming in to watch content exclusive to the platform,” Roberts said. “That's over 315,000 people every single day who treat us in exactly the same way as they do a Disney+ or a Netflix, except that our entire userbase actually gets ads and they're used to watching them."

AI adloads

But not as many ads if Seven’s lower AI-led adload trials hold – early data out of its AI Factory proof of concept testing shows a direct link between fewer ads and more viewing. Roberts said Seven’s VOD audiences were up 30 per cent this year even without reduced ad loads – and additional improvements of 20-25 per cent were likely as ads reduced.

“Interestingly even with just an average of six minutes of ads [per hour] on premium VOD and exclusives, we're seeing huge increases in engagement,” Roberts said.

In the adload trials testing against younger audiences, Roberts noted big viewing gains when the number of ad pods in an hour was cut from six to four.

“We're between 15 per cent and 20 per cent increases in time spent through the proof of concepts that we're seeing," he said. "It’s showing really positive signs at the moment.”

Tent poles personalised

Seven is also pushing hard on viewer and user personalisation in which it says the idea of “tent pole” programming will be different for many.

“We've got multiple people around Australia who've watched every episode of Aussie Lobster Men multiple times,” Roberts said. “That is a tent pole to someone in Australia and that is the reality of 7Plus. We've got personalisation on that platform that ensures that the content that our audience wants to see is continually put in front of them.

"What that means is that people are watching a greater variety of programming more regularly – and at a greater scale."

Now to convince the market.