Commentary
Pausing TV: Viewers Enjoy, Marketers Adjust
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, May 3, 2019
During Hulu’s TV upfront presentation, Senior Vice President of Advertising Peter Naylor talked up a statistic that, in the past, wouldn’t be touted so highly in reference to TV consumer behavior: stopping video.
For many, this isn't a good benchmark for TV network producers or advertising marketing partners. Full-motion video storytelling is still a premium deal.
But now -- in this fractionalization media world -- we look for any edge and engagement.
Among Hulu’s 28 million monthly subscribers (amounting to 58 million viewers), the company says there are a total of 1.1 billion “ad-supported” pauses per month -- pauses that probably come when viewers leave the room temporarily where the screen resides.
And that means opportunity.
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Video pauses on Hulu, as well as other platforms, mean that marketers can offer a quick and somewhat non-intrusive commercial message for products -- with display messaging.
Now, digital media displays may not be assigned the same value as full-motion video advertising. But big-screen digital TV advertising display holds real value -- not just by sheer size, but in adjusting to media consumers' digital behavior.
Naylor also noted that Hulu’s median age is 31, around 20 years younger than linear TV network viewing. Hulu viewers are probably more accustomed to this kind of activity.
Added to this, Hulu notes lower overall TV advertising -- limiting commercial pods of 90 seconds. In addition, there is lower frequency -- no more than two times in an episode and four times a day.
Can all traditional TV networks-programmers offer the same type of “pausing” advertising on linear TV? DirecTV subscribers already get still TV promotional messaging when pausing while watching time-shifted viewing.
Figuring TV networks will continue to seek more linear TV advertising alternatives, new monetization formats are something to consider. Full stop.
Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
Wayne, no one can argue against Hulu's younger demos or the concept of significantly less cluttered breaks for ads---than "linear TV". The key questions then become whether the "pauses" are scheduled like TV breaks, at logical times in the content-----between scenes rather than in the middle of them, as an example---- and what Hulu is charging as its CPM base---again, relative to "linear TV". With only 26-28 million homes as subscribers, Hulu is definitely not much better than a large cable channel when it comes to mass reach, so its primary value is adding short term reach among 18-34s while offering better targeting efficiencies and, probably, superior commercial recall and motivation outcomes. I hope that Hulu gets around to showing us more data on the latter aspects---verified ad message recall and sales motyivation on a comparative basis with the broadcast TV networks and cable channels. However as Hulu is owned by these same entities I doubt that it will undertake such research in the near future---after all, why make your owners' product look bad?