Clark Turner, Editor UTalk Marketing
How TV will look in the digital future
How will the media landscape look in 2015? Well we could be faced with a media addiction epidemic and consumer ‘switch off’ backlash, if a new report is to be believed.
But don’t worry, there’ll still be a place for TV despite the information avalanche.
According to ‘Media 2015:The Future of Media’, produced by US sports broadcaster, ESPN, together with media network, Mindshare, and Unilever four possible scenarios could emerge as shaped by potential consumption habits and information providers.
In one, social media could dominate leading to increased fragmentation of the market and further challenges to agencies and brands in reaching consumers. Another possible picture, called ‘Portal of Me’ suggests a more flexible approach to media access as consumers look to trusted sources for information.
However, bring the factors of age and education into the equation under the further two scenarios and the future of the media environment looks rather more stable.
“The future will probably look like a combination of each scenario, but TV will stand up in the longer term,” Mindshare’s North American managing director for consumer insight, Mark Potts, told AdWeek.com
“We’re not sounding the death knell of traditional advertising. We’re just preparing for every contingency.”
That future will of course include viewing through VoD platforms, the advancement of which in the UK has now been given a boost by the Internet Advertising Bureau.
The body’s Video Council is backing VAST 2.0 (Video Advertising Standard Templates) in a bid to increase advertiser confidence in the medium, allowing marketers to more easily run multi-site video campaigns, reaching non-traditional TV audiences.
Publishers already signed up include ITV, Channel 4, BSkyB and Turner along with CBS, Microsoft, Telegraph and the Times Online.
The IAB hopes that as VAST 2.0 is implemented by more publishers, it will make it simpler to run campaigns on a multitude of sites – such as newspapers, magazines, portals and other websites – while increasing the reach of a campaign to equal the size of TV.
But perhaps more exciting is that agencies and advertisers will have increased insight as a result of advanced metrics. Not only will they be able to track impression and click data via a third party ad serving solution, but also related user behaviour.
They’ll also be able to see how a user has engaged with the video placements such as calls for action on the page or if a user interacted with a companion display advert. Now that’s what I call video worth watching.
It’s an exciting development as digital advances further and further into consumers’ lives. Many old school traditional marketers continue to be baffled by the medium extending their digital strategy no further than simply building a website. Unfortunately, bafflement often leads to resistance. But, just like King Canute, it’s a fight they can’t win.
We know for a fact this mentality exists. Articles on digital marketing at UTalkMarketing.com are some of the most read. Our training programmes on digital strategy, search, analytics, social media and the like have never been busier.
But as any Trekkie knows, “Resistance is futile.” So rather than running, isn’t it time to embrace the digital future and get plugged in to a new world of exciting possibilities.
www.utalkmarketing.com