Follow the eyeballs: Digital gains more share on media plans
The Trade Desk
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‘A tipping-point year’: Why 2022 was pivotal for shifting linear TV dollars
By Ilyse Liffreing
Many of the world’s leading marketers are reassessing how to generate maximum value from every advertising dollar amid high inflation, fears of a recession, and the lingering impacts of a global pandemic. And that means many advertising channels, such as TV, are at a tipping point.
Take Procter & Gamble (P&G) — the world’s largest advertiser — which now invests 50 percent of its media spend in digital, as P&G Chief Financial Officer Andrew Schulten stated on the consumer packaged goods giant’s latest earnings call. Schulten described how the focus is shifting from linear TV spend to programmatic and digital, an area he says is “a lot more targeted and a lot more precise in terms of delivering reach.”
“It really has been a tipping-point year,” says Tim Hill, head of partnerships at Interpublic-owned media agency Initiative, which works with several major brands like Lego, Nintendo, and Carlsberg. Hill says the agency is “pushing beyond” the point where 50 percent of clients’ ad spend is now dedicated toward digital video, with most concentrated in connected TV (CTV).
It’s a trend that’s unlikely to change in 2023 and beyond, experts say, as decisions are buoyed by consumer demand, the onslaught of new programming and platform options, and the need to drive return on investment as marketers face economic uncertainty. A new Insider Intelligence forecast estimates that U.S. advertisers will have spent $21.16 billion on CTV in 2022, a 23 percent increase from 2021. That amount is expected to steadily increase to $43.59 billion by 2026.
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TV manufacturers wrestle with designing TV home screens for “peak TV”
By Zac Wang
You come home, plonk down in front of the TV, and turn it on, looking to relax after a long day’s work. You’re greeted by endless tiles of content — blockbuster movies, bingeworthy TV shows, and enticing documentaries. You scroll back and forth, unable to make up your mind, until you realize you’ve just spent 15 minutes trying to decide what to watch. Exasperated, you sigh and settle for reruns of Game of Thrones.
You’re not the only one wrestling with the torrent of content cascading through smart TVs — streaming companies and TV manufacturers know that designing a home screen that has viewers watching content as fast as possible is vital for their success.
Streaming already tops mobile in commanding 50.8 percent of the daily time people spend watching video. The evolution of the home screen into a smart TV ushers in a new frontier, one where manufacturers, streaming platforms, and advertisers are rethinking how content reaches the viewer.
“It transformed from being a home screen, where it was more about function and selecting apps, to more like a content hub to surface and discover content,” says Stefan Blickensd?rfer, chief technology officer (CTO) at 3 Screen Solutions (3SS), a firm that develops apps for smart TVs.