The television has been a fixture in living rooms around the world for several decades now. The technology has evolved smoothly — from black-and-white screens to colour, from cathode ray tubes to plasma and liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. Through all of this, people have continued to spend more time watching TV.
Advertising has long been the dominant brand marketing player. Not only because people spend endless hours in front of it, but also because our focused attention on this highly emotive medium makes for incredibly effective marketing. It is only natural, therefore, that new players in the field are aiming to disrupt its sway with newer and more path-breaking phenomena largely driven by rapidly growing over-the-top (OTT) content.
This streaming content includes Netflix and Hulu in the US; Spuul and BoxTV closer home in India; and YouTube all over the world, along with other on-demand IP-based services and time-shift TV. This content is delivered via broadband rather than proprietary broadcast, cable or satellite TV connections.
More and more people are increasingly consuming video content not only on their TV sets but also on their desktops, tablets and mobile devices. That this kind of digital content is only set to grow can be seen by the heavy investments in building bandwidth globally. India is no exception: Reliance Jio’s upcoming launch later this year is a case in point. Recent mergers in the sector such as those in the US — AT&T and DirecTV, Comcast and TimeWarner — clearly demonstrate where the world is headed in terms of digital TV.
Video, video everywhere For decades, measuring the reach of TV by using the gross rating point (GRP) system was considered to be the most accurate way of quantifying the effectiveness of television content. With consumer viewership evolving so quickly to digital devices, its effectiveness and accuracy is being questioned.
We live in a world where global brands combine consumer electronics, social media and apps to create disruptive new business models without warning. Streaming OTT video is not constrained by any commercial or technical boundaries of traditional broadcast television. There are no schedules. There are no channels. The half-hour daily soap or set of episodes for a season won’t really matter. These are conventions that had come into existence for reasons that aren’t a limitation anymore. Now it’s a simple case of eight-hour streaming for a season and the viewer decides when she wants to pause, if at all. TV viewing is finally not limited by time or because of a particular channel.
The viewers are in control now. They want to watch video content of their choice whenever they want, on whatever device they prefer. This makes for some brilliant opportunities for more innovation. More convenience and choice spark innovation in advertising. That is because people are not watching the same thing at the same time. With the trend of everyone sitting down to watch the same shows at the same time fast vanishing, the advertising market will have to become real-time, with ads being shown based on who is watching what at that exact moment.
Intuitive navigation The navigation experience has also become a key factor. Mobile phone-based user interfaces have the potential to become more intuitive. The ubiquity of video screens with touch interfaces has brought in more breakthroughs as IP allows interactivity to be applied to video.
The future of television advertising is not necessarily the future of digital TV advertising. As consumers are becoming less tolerant of intrusive commercial messages, permission marketing is predicated on the desire of brands to get “close” to their customers and avoid intrusions. Brands are shifting from push- to pull-based engagement formats. Google’s growth from AdWords has been the result of the shift in print business. Imagine what will happen when the television content equation shifts.
Until now, most broadcasters and premium video-content owners have used internet the same way as TV, essentially as a one-way medium. Consider the possibilities if users tap their fingers to interact with a character, location or discover a product, without intruding on the immersive nature of the content? And, in the process, make video consumption a two-way street? The magic has just begun.
The writer is a tech entrepreneur and former managing director of Logica India