What you need to know:

• Seven shattered its digital viewing predictions for this year's Olympic Games, recording 4.7bn streamed minutes on 7Plus.
• More than 2.5m new users also signed up for the BVOD platform, taking its total unique ID count to 9.2m - paradise for first party data aficionados.
• Close to 70 per cent of the new users were also male, with 65 per cent in the "lucrative and hard to reach" under 39 demographic.
• Sales boss Kurt Burnette said the results will have a major impact on how the network approaches sports and content deals in the future – and must now grapple with how to keep the blokes entertained via a platform that skewed female.

Data gold

Seven’s Chief Revenue Officer Kurt Burnette admits the broadcaster didn’t see young Australian blokes stampeding to Tokyo but they did – in big numbers. Seven is now working to shift its approach to BVOD content in the event wash-up which smashed digital viewing forecasts and delivered 2.5 million new 7Plus signed in users, pushing its total logged-in users to 9.2 million. It’s paradise for first party data aficionados.  

Burnette says 70 per cent of those signing up during the two week period identified as male. Of that tally, 65 per cent were under 39 years old – which Burnette views as one of the "harder to reach" demographics on 7Plus.

“This was another unexpected turn, given that 7Plus’ audience has a strong female skew, so we now need to look at other areas of our content acquisition strategy to meet the demands of a growing male audience,” Burnette told Mi3.

“We have a big focus on ensuring we keep those users returning to 7Plus and while we’ve invested in things like a surfing channel, outdoors content and other verticals, there’s certainly a lot more we can do.

“It can also be done with greater personalisation, given the amount of data and viewing behaviour we generated during that time.”

More broadly the Tokyo Olympics may have ended but the race for unique IDs and digital platform dominance is just heating up, with Seven closing the gap on Nine's bigger user ID pot after a "record-breaking" two week run.

Delayed by a year, Seven had high expectations for The Games, particularly in the number of new users it wanted for its broadcast video on demand (BVOD) platform 7Plus.

What followed was a level of digital TV viewing that exceeded those expectations and even caused a systems crunch at the industry's measurement provider, OzTAM.

"We were forecasting 1.5bn minutes and we hit 4.7bn, so that gives you an idea of the levels that it exceeded. Thankfully we tested above that and took seriously learnings for the issues we faced in Rio 2016 and what occurred with the FIFA World Cup in 2018," said Burnette.

Negotiation fuel

Seven’s data insights and bigger ID pool off the back of the games now have the potential to play a big role in future “event television” negotiations, Burnette says.

While the dust has only just settled on the network’s long-running stoush with Cricket Australia over its rights agreement, negotiations for other properties such as the NRL are also due to open in the next 12-months.

Despite the argument that live sport is best suited to linear TV, the decision by codes such as Rugby Union and Football (soccer) to team up with SVOD services such Stan and Paramount+ have shown a deeper interest in digital platforms and live streaming capabilities.

Burnette said the growth of signed in users will "of course further validate” Seven’s position in future rights negotiations but also when it comes to any form of “big event” television.

“I don’t think it’s a proof point that is going to be the reason behind the decision, it’s certainly an area where those bodies and the likes are going,” Burnette said.

“But ultimately it is going to come down to how you commercialise those eyeballs and drive further engagement in the sport or events and that is still reliant on how the broadcast and digital work in tandem.

“Digital will certainly remain an extension of those rights and play a bigger role going forward but the prize will always be the total eyeballs, not one over the other.”

Unexpected trends

When it came to customer experience, feedback in the early stages found that some viewers were finding the accessibility of the content overwhelming, given the number of live streams available.

In a short turnaround, Seven launched several explainers helping viewers navigate the platform, including social media Q&A’s and walkthroughs of the app in the linear broadcast.

“With a proposition on the scale that it was, there is always going to be a level of mixed feedback but the numbers paint the picture,” Burnette said.

“When you exceed streaming expectations at the level that we did, it’s fair to say the overall experience was well received.”

Viewers were also less hesitant to move between channels in the linear broadcast and on 7Plus, something the network had flagged as a concern.

The network had historically been less inclined to move viewers across channels in the past but felt the access to every major sport gave the best opportunity to trial a new programming strategy.

“Typically messing with the proposition has been something we avoid, such as interruptions for the AFL or news but because we’d invested in helping people navigate through linear and BVOD we were happy to prompt people to change channel or 'head here for more’,” Burnette said.

“Because we were able to see everything in real-time, when we asked people to move to 7Plus for example, which we tried to keep to a minimum, the live streaming minutes spiked in that window, so we knew it was working.”

While the streaming minutes broke records and slowed systems, it still only accounted for 10-15 per cent of total viewing.

The 4.7bn streaming minutes were eclipsed by the 50bn done by the linear broadcast.

Burnette said this proved “two couldn’t live” without working in tandem, with streaming adding 15-20 per cent (depending on the demos) in incremental reach.

“For Seven it was about understanding what the 7Plus platform added to the linear broadcast experience and how it could drive our digital strategy,” Burnette said.

“What was interesting is how people took to the platform as a unique experience. We had expected a large amount of the viewing to mirror what was happening on the TV broadcast.

“Instead, 56 per cent of viewing was being done on the channels outside of Seven, 7TWO and 7MATE, which was not what we expected.”

Advancing ad dollars

Burnette said there were also significant learnings from an advertiser perspective, with Seven working with real-time ad measurement business Adgile.

The dynamic creative deal included monitoring the impact of different creative, its length and placement across 7Plus during the close to 40 Olympic streaming channels.

Seven could then provide real-time optimisation feedback such as moving ads to different channels, sports, times of day or adjusting from a 5-second to 30-second spot, based on real-time user interaction and traffic to sponsor websites.

Neither Seven nor Adgile were yet able to disclose whether the dynamic creative optimisation had moved the needle for advertisers – it is notoriously difficult to do well. 

“It was a pretty bleeding edge strategy,” said Burnette said.

“I think it was a great proof point around the convergence of addressable advertising and real-time optimisation and an area we now have some great case studies and insights from, so expect it to be an area we continue to invest in."