Tag Archives: TV

Why do the Germans beat the Brits at media conferences?

By April 28 2012, 12:55 pm Comments Off

I’ve just returned from Dusseldorf, where I presented the keynote speech at the German broadcasters’ ‘TV Effectiveness Day’ at the hugely impressive Tonhalle.  It was my third time presenting at this event, and this was the best of the lot. Everything passed by with a ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ efficiency, the entertainment was first class and the catering alone cost more than most conferences cost to stage in total.

What impressed me most was the attendance. Well over 1,300 attendees, of which almost 1,000 were from media agencies or advertisers. In fact, the number of advertisers alone – around three hundred in total – is more than I’ve seen at a year’s worth of media events in the UK. Read more »

The future is here blah blah blah…

By February 20 2012, 4:00 pm Comments Off

What a start to the year it’s been for IPTV, scarcely out of the news each week since January moved in and the numbers are looking good. Once we moved past BARB’s attempt in January to tell us that online viewing had plateaued, (viewing on PC/Laptop only grew 3% YOY was the headline, buried in the copy was the news that users switched to accessing content through set-top boxes, mobiles and tablets instead) then the numbers started rolling in. C4 banked stellar numbers on 4oD in November, BBC iPlayer recorded half a million hours of viewing on Boxing Day and then posted 4.3m visits on 2nd January – its record day to date. Read more »

The future of TV metrics and measurement

By November 16 2011, 1:53 pm Comments Off

I recently attended BARB’s very constructive presentation on the future of cross-platform TV measurement, where they announced the establishment of the Measurement Sciences Forum. The new forum is a great initiative from BARB to ensure focused industry debate around the development and evolution of an important area for the future of TV advertising.

The TV industry is going from strength-to-strength and growing into new areas such as online, mobile, set-top boxes and personalised TV consumption. With such rapid growth comes the demand for a new set of metrics that can act as a trusted source of measurement for both media owners and buyers. The opportunities in digital have given rise to a large number of different and disparate methods of measurement. It is our responsibility as an industry to come together to develop an industry-agreed set of measurement standards so that the media world can be confident in the data on which they trade. Read more »

In or out – the most important media segmentation

By November 14 2011, 2:35 pm Comments Off

There does appear to be a strong relationship between television and outdoor; when used together, they seem to aid advertising effectiveness, by working in a highly complementary way. Certainly, the IPA Databank suggests they work well together, and well over half of the prize winning case studies feature TV as a lead medium and outdoor as a significant support channel. The fact that one dominates our time in the home and the other is eponymous with the time we spend out of home suggests to me that the most basic media segmentation, and the one that is perhaps most relevant to the media consumer, is in or out; whether we are sitting in the relative calm and comfort of our own living rooms, or we are out and about in the big, wide world, getting on with our lives and managing to cut a path through all of the noise and distractions.

What is more difficult, fighting to get content on IPTVs or a seat on a train?

By October 19 2011, 12:16 pm Comments Off

It’s 6.35pm and as my, short on carriages, and over-crowded train pulls out of Waterloo, I’m left wondering whether people prefer for life to be easy, or just not too difficult. The difference? Well, I would argue that we all want an easier life, but it needs some challenges otherwise we get bored. As long as people don’t go out of their way to create difficulty, then we should be happy most of the time.

A look behind Sky’s 35% ad growth

By August 4 2011, 12:32 pm Comments Off

One of the things that struck me in BSkyB’s results last week was how well Sky’s ad revenue has performed. Overall revenues at Sky climbed 16% year-on-year to £6.6bn in the year to 30 June 2011 but revenues from advertising soared by 35% to £458m.

If you look back through Sky’s results over the last two years you can calculate that it generated £213m in ad revenue in the first six months of 2011, up 31.5% from the £162m in ad revenue generated in the six months to 30 June 2010. Read more »

The impact of TV spend on search performance

By February 18 2011, 1:04 pm Comments Off

Typically brands can see a 60 to 80 per cent jump in searches on brand terms during the entirety of a TV ad campaign, with a 40 to 60 per cent jump for generic searches.

Jay Hunt and the National Audit Office

By August 28 2010, 4:19 pm Comments Off

The second day of Edinburgh has been rife with speculation about whether BBC One controller Jay Hunt is going to get the top creative job at Channel 4 and she intensified the furore by refusing to say she was committed to the BBC in a session today.

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Thompson MacTaggart disappoints some

By August 28 2010, 10:15 am 1 Comment

There was a mixed response to Mark Thompson’s MacTaggart lecture last night with many delegates saying that while he made many interesting points, he failed to rouse the rabble which was testified by the fact a BBC employee I spoke to said she didn’t feel particularly inspired by her leader.

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Touché, Tess

By June 10 2010, 3:03 pm 1 Comment

TV won the ‘battle of the media’ contest at Media360 this afternoon. Good end line from Thinkbox’s Tess Alps: “TV ads will always be the most enjoyed, talked about form of advertising. That’s why these other media – posters, , newspapers, websites – are trying to be more like TV.”

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