This first appeared in the AdNews 2019 Annual edition. Subscribe here for your copy.
In 2020, marketers more than ever will need to be more strategic about who they partner with and how they achieve cut-through with consumers.
What is the true marketing power of a medium like television? Simply put: it’s an effective medium for marketers. The research shows it. More effective than every other available medium. And why? Because television brings together an audience of millions of people each night around a single screen in an environment where marketers’ messages are delivered full-screen, with sound on, in an environment where audiences are truly engaged with the premium content they have chosen to watch.
There is no doubt that consumers’ habits are evolving, and this has impacted on audience volumes for linear television. But the television of today is so much more than linear. First, on-demand television offered by all products is growing its audiences and its reach at a rapid pace. And second, with the VOZ panel to be in full operation from next year, what we will in fact see is that the reach of television, across linear and now on-demand, is much the same as it was 10 years ago. The early VOZ data tests show this to be the fact.
It means the television of next year and the future will always remain the powerhouse for marketers, with linear audiences of substantial scale and impact complemented by the incremental reach offered by on-demand. Even better, the VOZ panel will enable buying based on behavioural data in addition to age and sex demographics. This mix will be by far the best way for marketers to achieve their outcomes, aided by the new sales technology that we at Nine continue to invest in to make the process easier and more defined.
At the same time, we have seen certain parts of the media ecosystem actively seeking to muddy the waters with vanity metrics designed to confuse the market (most notably with PwC’s flawed video report on behalf of Facebook) about the effectiveness of television, be it linear or broadcast video on demand.
Too often these reports over-inflate the viewership of an ad on certain social platforms, or worse, selectively misrepresent the true reach of television. Or make false claims that you can buy incremental reach on these platforms. Marketers should be very concerned about allocating brand money to social platforms. Or even over-indexing to performance marketing over brand marketing, based on cost metrics that don’t consider cost on any effectiveness basis. Or even on an apples-for-apples basis, such as cost-per-completed view.
For content companies like Nine, our challenge and also our opportunity remains the same: to seek to own the national conversation around our shows, and in so doing give marketers the platform to market themselves on. I would argue that with content like Married at First Sight or the NRL and tennis, which all capture audiences in the millions, we define the water-cooler conversation for weeks and months on end — across all media and all platforms.
But equally it’s the power of franchises like Lego Masters, The Voice and Australian Ninja Warrior with their ability to bring the family together around a shared experience, what we call co-viewing, that illustrates why great content matters to advertisers.
For the advertiser’s message to work the content must connect and the message must be seen. As the owners of brands, we should not allow ourselves to give the same weight to a two-second newsfeed “view” in a crowd environment that we do to a full-screen, 30-second TV commercial, especially when it comes to brand building and creating an affinity with the brand.
There is no doubt that the social platforms have an important place in the marketing and distribution ecosystem. But we need to continue to examine the pendulum and how far it should swing towards platforms that focus on the bottom of the marketing funnel. The competitive advantage all content companies have is that we operate higher up in the brand-building journey (although we have also built out our own data propositions).
We are skilled at creating an emotional connection/journey and ensuring that both our content, and our partners’ content, continues to resonate with the millions of people who engage with our properties on a daily basis.
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