As we enter 2021, there are many key Digital Advertising trends and opportunities expected for this year. Connected-TV (CTV) is one of them. In our member guest blog post, we caught up with Nick Morely, EMEA Managing Director at Integral Ad Science (IAS) about their recently released UK Streaming Wars report that looked into UK consumer use and preferences for CTV devices and ad-supported streaming services.
Nick Morley joined Integral Ad Science (IAS) in January 2017 to lead the strategic development of the EMEA business. Nick has a proven track record in launching and scaling high-growth businesses across Europe, with a decade’s worth of digital advertising industry experience.
CTV adoption has skyrocketed in recent years. Consumers are drawn in by the ability to watch their favourite content on devices and subscribe to streaming services that meet their preferences and budget.
But when subscriptions start to add up, how does this impact consumer choice? What are the most preferred devices and platforms? IAS asked UK consumers about their CTV usage and preferences when it comes to paying for subscription services.
CTV and streaming on the rise
With major changes to consumer habits last year, viewer patterns have rapidly evolved.
The overwhelming majority (90%) of UK consumers have access to a CTV device, with integrated smart TVs preferred for almost two-thirds (64%) over external box or stick options.
Among consumers that have paid-for subscriptions, Netflix is the streaming service of choice, with almost two-thirds (78%) of UK consumers having access to the platform, followed by Amazon Prime Video (53%), Disney+ (39%), NowTV (19%) and YouTube Premium (15%).
Consumers willing to shift to ad-supported streaming content
The UK Streaming Wars report shows that viewers are now increasingly open to ad-supported video options, so the onus is on the digital advertising industry to help marketers meet consumer needs with an enjoyable experience.
Eight in ten UK consumers (83%) are willing to watch ads to gain access to free streaming content. While over half (56%) plan to start watching free ad-supported streaming services over the next 12 months.
Contextual targeting helps to drive ad completion with over half (54%) of consumers willing to view an ad to completion if it’s relevant to the content that they are watching.
Digital video and CTV can provide enhanced targeting and richer data insights compared to standard linear TV. As a result, almost one-fifth of UK consumers (17%) are more likely to remember ads or likely to look up products and services of ads when viewed while streaming video or watching CTV.
The driving factors behind digital video consumption
Cost is the driving factor for UK consumers that switch to free ad-supported streaming content. Almost two-thirds (61%) of consumers want to save money and three in ten (30%) say that they already pay too much for subscription-based streaming services.
Almost half (44%) of consumers find the ability to skip certain ads as the top reason they prefer free streaming services to linear TV.
Free ad-supported streaming services can differentiate themselves with both price and content, offering a clear opportunity for brands to connect with consumers if relevancy and frequency are prioritised.
You can download the latest IAS UK Streaming Wars UK research here.
You can also join IAB Europe and IAS in a webinar on 16th February 2021 at 11:00 CET to explore how consumer behaviours have changed in the UK and what the future holds - register to secure your space here.
IAB Europe has an immediate opening for a Public Policy Officer. The position is a new one in the Association’s growing policy advocacy and regulatory affairs team.
IAB Europe is the European-level association for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem. Through its membership of National IABs and corporate members (media, technology and marketing companies), its mission is to represent the industry’s interests and proactively drive change to ensure that advertising can continue to support a pluralistic media and the continued availability of a rich universe of online information and other services on terms that make them accessible to everyone.
Scope of role
Reporting to the Public Policy Director, the Public Policy Officer will support the Association’s Policy Committee, monitoring EU policy and legislative developments and planning and executing outreach to EU institutional audiences and media, in partnership with IAB Europe’s members, including National IABs, and with like-minded associations from across the digital advertising ecosystem.
Key tasks will include:
The successful candidate will have:
Personal Attributes
To apply, please send your CV & a covering letter by email to jobs@iabeurope.eu with a subject line: ‘Public Policy Officer - Application’. While we may not be able to reach out to every applicant, we will contact candidates whose skills and experience are a strong match for the position.
In this week's member guest post, we are delighted to welcome Emma Newman, Chief Revenue Officer, EMEA for PubMatic. Emma discusses how to make the most of innovations in CTV.
Emma Newman has served as a pioneer in the digital media space with 20 plus years’ experience in all marketing disciplines, digital communications and business development. Emma joined PubMatic in 2014 as a Senior Director of International Marketing, was promoted to Vice President of International Marketing and later took on a commercial role as VP, UK. Emma was promoted to Chief Revenue Office, EMEA in August of 2019. Prior to PubMatic, Emma spent 10 years at MSN in several marketing roles before transitioning to lead their business excellence function across EMEA. She then served as AOL’s Senior Director of UK Marketing. Emma later joined the team that launched the Huffington Post in EMEA and sat on the board of Clear Channel UK as their Marketing Director. In her new role as Chief Revenue Office, EMEA, strategy, change, and bringing people together continue to be the central theme in her career.
Making the Most of Innovation in CTV
With time spent watching linear TV decreasing and time spent watching CTV in all its various guises increasing, now is the right time to innovate and develop a suite of CTV advertising solutions that provide consumers with a great user experience, drive performance for brands, and maximise yield for CTV content providers.
Where are we now?
With the number of CTV providers at an all-time high and the market evolving rapidly, we’re in a phase where innovation is key to survival. For established broadcasters, failure to innovate could result in a decrease in value for viewers and advertisers. The challenge is that an established company may have a single line of sight when it comes to success in contrast with this need for innovation. Such a short-term focus hampers innovation as it leaves little room for investment in new technology and the resources required to drive innovation. Newer entrants, like Roku and Hayu, are primed to take advantage of this situation because they are in a position to innovate quickly and their leadership teams are focused on gaining market share.
In many markets, CTV has evolved from broader addressable TV offerings. The combination of this heritage, paired with concentrated high-quality supply and the need to develop a roadmap for CTV first, has meant that programmatic has been an afterthought. The new research ‘Future of CTV Advertising in Europe’ that PubMatic has commissioned from Video Week Research, shows that the sell-side is already building for a future where programmatic advertising will be a driving force for future growth. Furthermore, the findings of the research show that the buy-side sees programmatic advertising as a means of bringing their own data to CTV advertising.
Now is the time to eliminate the gap
At the heart of most ad tech companies’ vision is to transform advertising for the better. This means focusing on user experience, delivering outstanding performance for brands, and helping publishers, and now CTV content providers with maximum yield. Our research has revealed some key areas for the CTV advertising industry to focus on. Five of them included:
Developing CTV specific header bidding solutions is going to be particularly important because, unlike video ads, CTV ads are served in pods meaning there are two or more sequential ads which need careful management to avoid over exposure of a single ad and competitive separation. Specialised CTV header bidding solutions leverage applicable best practices from video header bidding solutions while also applying logic that solves for the unique challenges CTV advertising presents. Mainstream uptake of specialist CTV header bidding solutions will maximise campaign performance and viewer experience.
It is also important to invest in building internal knowledge of CTV. This could be in the form of training or new hires but without the talent available to guide your customers through the nuances of the channel, again, the value your offer is diminished. The specialists within your organisation should also be actively involved in the current initiatives to define CTV and educating the wider ecosystem. This is more than just positioning as a thought leader, it’s about ensuring that the resulting standards and best practices reflect the requirements of all players, not just the biggest players in the space. By doing so we will create a level playing field, fair competition, and thus increase value.
Innovation is never ‘done’
Successfully navigating change is empowering for businesses as it creates a framework for future growth. In fast-moving industries like digital advertising there is a need for constant change through innovation. Today, we’re swimming against a strong current of change but if the right strategic moves are made, we will find ourselves back in a period of growth which will allow the focus to shift back to revenue.
CTV is a fantastic opportunity across the globe. In Europe, we will see markets developing at different speeds. Furthermore, if early indications come true, we may see individual markets breaking away and creating tailored CTV environments based on fundamental differences in linear TV. This was a recurring theme throughout the interviews for our research and one which deserves great respect. Today, we are a long way from having a single European market for CTV (and we may never quite get there), but it is already well understood that cross-country collaboration is key to enabling competitiveness and scale.
Download the full research here: The Future of CTV Advertising in Europe
Scope of the role
IAB Europe is recruiting a full-time Digital Advertising Technology Director who will support the Association’s mission to ensure regulation is based on a good understanding of how digital advertising technology works and contributes to its ability to deliver economic and social good, facilitate legal compliance, and remove technical and business barriers to its uptake by advertisers, agencies and publishers in Europe.
This is a leadership role that will focus on providing technical expertise and delivering strategic advice to IAB Europe’s committees, taskforces, working groups, and members, helping surface the needs of the European digital advertising and marketing industry from a technology point of view, and collaborating with technical standards organisations, including those outside of Europe, to ensure those needs are reflected.
Specifically, the Technology Director would be expected to
To deliver the above, the successful candidate will have a deep understanding of the online advertising “ecosystem” and the technology involved in the delivery of programmatic advertising. A relevant academic background (e.g. in software engineering) and at least three years of direct professional experience in one or more companies operating in the sector are minimum requirements, as is good written and spoken English.
Experience in multi-cultural environments, ability to work autonomously, and a willingness to spontaneously identify and take on new challenges in a dynamic and demanding professional environment is important. Alongside this, the role will need to confidently and with authority contribute to large and diverse working groups and feel comfortable when in some instances leadership of these groups is required.
The position could be based in Belgium (Brussels) or elsewhere in Europe. The position reports to IAB Europe’s CEO and will require collaboration with colleagues on the policy, legal compliance and industry services teams within IAB Europe.
Capabilities
Knowledge, skills and experience
Technical / functional skills
Personal attributes
Interested candidates should email Marjorie Veys with a covering letter and CV.
About IAB Europe
IAB Europe is the European-level association for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem. Through its membership of media, technology and marketing companies and national IABs, its mission is to lead political representation and promote industry collaboration to deliver frameworks, standards and industry programmes that enable business to thrive in the European market.
On 15th August 2020, The Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) upgraded from v1.1 to v2.0. Now with over 650 vendors and 115 CMPs registered, it is well on its way to assisting all companies in the digital advertising supply chain to meet transparency and user choice requirements related to data processing, with great success.
With many of the largest Vendors and CMPs in programmatic advertising, including Adobe, Axel Springer, Criteo, Google, GroupM, Integral Ad Science, MediaMath, Oracle Data Cloud, OneTrust Preference Choices, The Trade Desk, Quantcast, Xandr, and more registered to implement TCF v2.0, now is as good a time as any to make it your resolution to join.
So, what is the TCF v2.0, who is it designed for, and what benefits can it bring?
To help vendors, publishers, and CMPs implementing TCF v2.0, we have created a host of materials, from workshop webinars and FAQs to Vendor Fact sheets and more. All of which you can find here. But if you want to get up to speed on what the TCF v2.0 is quickly, then why not take it from those involved in shaping and creating the new version of the framework?
Featuring members of the TCF Steering Committee, the snackable videos below will provide you with all the information you need to know.
Video 2 - Who is the TCF designed for?
Video 4 - What’s new in the TCF 2.0?
Video 5 - User & industry benefits of the TCF 2.0
Next steps
Ready to register? You can find all the information you need on how to join the TCF here.
Alongside its early challenges and uncertainty around digital ad spend, 2020 has been a big year for digital advertising. In our member guest blog post, we spoke with Nick Morley, EMEA Managing Director at Integral Ad Science (IAS) on the trends and opportunities expected this year.
Nick Morley joined Integral Ad Science (IAS) in January 2017 to lead the strategic development of the EMEA business. Nick has a proven track record in launching and scaling high-growth businesses across Europe, with a decade’s worth of digital advertising industry experience.
European recovery
The last year has seen not only the most content consumed online, but also a rise in hate speech and misinformation. Combined with privacy concerns and the deprecation of third-party cookies, advertisers have had to adapt and innovate like never before. The rise in digital content consumption, growth in digital video usage, advancement for contextual targeting and a shift towards brand suitability, are all welcome and positive signs for the digital advertising industry, according to Morley.
“Alongside its challenges, 2020 has proven to be a year of innovation for digital advertising as we witnessed changes that may be measured in years were instead measured in months,” he argued. “In 2021, the European recovery will accelerate and benefit from ad spend that migrated from other channels and strength in e-commerce.”
A suitable approach to targeting
IAS verifies the quality of digital ad placements for brands and advertisers. In other words, it provides the technology that allows advertisers to block ads from appearing next to unsafe content and towards suitable content online. It is the global leader in its space and has been at the heart of some of the innovations last year. When questions around keyword blocking and coronavirus were raised in 2020, IAS saw a 77% drop in “coronavirus”-related keyword blocking from mid-March to May in the UK. This is due to the industry’s quick response, commitment to education, and access to sophisticated contextual technology that allowed advertisers to not over block on news content.
Morley argued that this trend will continue and by combining brand safety and brand suitability activities, advertisers can avoid inappropriate content and also proactively target suitable content, ultimately supporting high quality journalism.
“This year, it’s essential that brands prioritise taking a prescriptive approach to keyword blocking – moving away from blanket approaches and towards optimising digital ad investments,” he said. “The focus on targeting towards suitable content, as opposed to blocking against unsafe content, will grow to be the new normal.”
The future of advertising is in digital video
It’s no question that work-from-home orders have fuelled usage of social media, streaming platforms, digital video and smart devices. Everyone is guilty of having scrolled continuously through social feeds and binged watched their favourite TV shows. As such, IAS conducted a survey of global digital advertising experts and found out that 88% expect the shift in ad spend from satellite linear TV to digital video such as streaming platforms will only accelerate in 2021.
"Advertisers are going to be spending more on digital video than ever before as the format emerges to become a major avenue for online advertising campaigns,” Morley said.
The biggest drivers for this, Morley explained, are audience migration and consumer viewing habits, alongside its ability to provide advertisers with enhanced targeting and richer data insights.
How we feel about content will influence how ads are delivered
According to recent IAS research, the majority of consumers (81%) prefer it when digital ads match the content that they are viewing. The content that people consume, the shows people like or dislike, has a big part to play in the ads that appear alongside it. Beyond this, advertisers are now able to target consumers based on the emotion or contextual relevance of content.
“Contextual analysis uses AI and Machine Learning (ML) to analyse the content of web pages at a cognitive semantic level,” Morley explained. “It can tell us, for example, that advertising cruise ship sales on a page related to a cruise ship accident, is not the relevant context.”
Targeting a user based on the type of content they are consuming on the page can prove effective. It’s a big game changer in a world where third-party cookies - the bit of code that tracks our online movement - will be made obsolete by Google this year. For Nick Morley and IAS, this presents an opportunity.
“Contextual targeting will achieve scale for advertisers in 2021,” he said. “This need will be particularly prevalent in Europe, where GDPR, privacy concerns and the phase-out from third-party cookies continues to limit the data available for audience targeting. Unlike cookies, contextual data analyses the content of a page and so is full-proof in a world without third-party cookies.”
But that’s not the only type of data or information that can be gathered from a page.
“In addition, sentiment analysis, providing the ability for brands to target based on negative or positive emotions will grow as it allows the industry to build more intelligent solutions,” Morley explained.
It takes a bot to catch a bot
Increased adoption and innovation pushes platforms forward, but also creates challenges around ad fraud. IAS defines a successful ad impression as one that is viewable by a real person in a safe and suitable environment (and that all of this happens within the desired geography of a campaign).
“A big trend that we’re seeing is that malicious bots and fraudsters are being programmed to appear as human as possible - intentionally watching videos online, or clicking on ads,” Morley warned. He recommended that sophisticated tools are required for detection.
“In the modern fraud landscape, it takes a bot to catch a bot,” Morley advised. “Advertisers need to make sure that their fraud mitigation solution has these capabilities because they cannot rely solely on human rules to try to stop a scalable machine-driven threat. In 2021, using a ML driven approach that learns about previously unknown threats will become critical,” Morley concluded.
IAB Europe is hereby issuing a call for expressions of interest from European regional-level advertising ecosystem organisations wishing to participate as Observers in the Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) Governance Board.
The Governance Board was created in 2020 for the purpose of holding all TCF instances to account and ensuring that the correct process is followed in the development of outcomes that align with the Framework’s strategic objectives. TCF instances comprise the Steering Group, its working groups, the Managing Organisation (MO), and the Dispute Resolution Panel.
The Board is made up of 15 voting members drawn from the TCF Steering Group and a number of non-voting Observers drawn from European regional-level industry associations and National IABs. It is chaired by Grant Nelson, Product Manager for Privacy at Xandr.
The role of Observers is to ensure that the broadest possible range of stakeholders implementing the Framework, including those who may not have the resource to be involved directly in the instances cited above, have insight into the holding- to-account of the TCF instances.
The TCF Governance Board meets four times per year in the first month of each quarter, each meeting is two hours. Under current circumstances, the meetings are held virtually. There were three meetings held in 2020 and the minutes of these meetings and papers relating to TCF governance can be viewed here. The next meeting is January 22, 2021.
All organisations who might be interested in an Observer seat are invited to read the governance papers linked above, and the MoU that governs the participation of European regional-level advertising ecosystem organisations as a non-voting observer in the TCF Governance Board. The MoU can be found in the same location as the governance papers.
We would ask all organisations considering this opportunity to consider the following and include their responses in their expressions of interest:
Your expression of interest should be submitted via email to the MO (cc the Secretariat of the TCF Governance Board, Anne Goodman). Early expressions of interest will be presented to the Governance Board by the Chair at the Q1 meeting (January 22) and any final expressions of interest at the Q2 meeting (first week of April date TBC).
