For decades now, TV has been the Floyd Mayweather of advertising – the strongest, most impactful, and most lucrative fighter in the ring. Ten years ago, it wasn’t fathomable that
something else might come along to knock it down.
But digital video has been training in the background and is now poised to give TV a shakedown in the coming years.
The benefits of TV advertising are obvious: its sight, sound and motion features hit you in ways that online advertising hasn’t been able to match. Sure, digital ads can be more
personalized and provide better metrics, but there’s something to be said for the way TV ads tap into a broad range of emotions from viewers.
With the rise of online video
consumption, online video spend is growing rapidly and is expected to reach nearly $15B by 2019, according to
eMarketer. Coupled with the explosive growth of video formats now available on programmatic exchanges, marketers have plenty of reasons to move more of their dollars away from TV and into digital
video.
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Let’s start with a confession: Although I watch plenty of shows, I don’t own a TV. And I am becoming more and more mainstream as households move online. It’s
time to face the facts: traditional TV consumption is on the decline. According to Nielsen, the overall
time spent watching TV per household is down by about four hours per month from last year.
Young people are dropping off even more rapidly, with a year-over-year decline of two hours
and 35 minutes per week. DVR views still only represent a fraction of their total viewing time, so we can’t blame time-shifted TV for the majority of the decline.
As time spent
watching TV drops, time spent watching online video rises. ZenithOptimedia found that the average amount of time spent consuming online video per day will increase by 23.3% in 2015.
There’s also growth on platforms like YouTube, Netflix and even Facebook. Facebook reported that their video views surged to 8B per day in Q3,
from just 1B earlier in the year. A lot of the growth comes from the ability to watch video on mobile devices, which makes video accessible anywhere, at anytime.
Even if people
continued to watch traditional TV and the online migration came to a halt, they still wouldn’t be as engaged as they are with online video. A recent study from digital agency Millward Brown found that when people watch television, they are observing it
in “lean-back mode,” meaning that they are passively absorbing content.
On the flip side, digital video prompts “lean-in” viewing, where people are
purposefully consuming video content. They actively made the decision to sit down and watch a show, versus having a TV set play in the background, or while they are multi-tasking. This higher level of
attention provides marketers with the opportunity to invest in quality storytelling, and form a deeper connection with customers.
In a world of ad blockers, consumers are in the
driver’s seat and they are demanding better quality ads. With data, you can easily make any online video viewing experience better, not worse. Knowing what people are interested in buying or
understanding their affinities can help you determine what video content to serve.
Programmatic video buyers are beginning to diversify their data-driven video buys with different
formats - including pre-roll, in-article, native and long-form content. The more relevant and immersive the experience is, the better your engagement or response will be. The addressability and
interactivity of online video makes it a strong reach and response vehicle, giving brands and people the best of both worlds.
As it stands today, TV is still the largest ad medium,
but it is not capable of delivering the same personal and relevant experience as digital channels. As long as people continue to watch online video, we’ll see more brands find ways to tightly
tether their data with high impact experiences, and we’ll patiently watch from the sidelines as online video steps up to challenge the long-standing, reigning media champion.