Online catch up services have gained in popularity for TV stations ever since the launch of the BBC iplayer. Now we have the ITV Player, the Sky Player, Channel 4 OnDemand and Demand Five. The BBC is currently only available inside the UK and therefore doesn’t carry any advertising. The others include pre-roll advertising with companion banners, the quality of their implementations varies however.
Channel 5 show a few ads before the content with regular (and rather well signposted) break throughout the show. The ads are varied and clickable to go through and find out more about the advertised products. Channel 4 loses the signposting but allows click-throughs and varies the ads, and both of these come with some form of companion banner ad.
Now – to get to the point of the post – if you are a fan of Le Tour de France then you will probably have been watching the nightly round up of the day’s activities. I had missed a few and decided to dedicate some time to catching up with a few on ITV.com, almost the perfect use case for catch up TV. After starting the first episode and seeing an ad for G-Force (FBI employs wise cracking guinea pigs to prevent terror plot) the program played. At the next ad break the same ad played, at the next ad break the same ad played……..ad infinitum.
Reach and frequency are important to advertisers, the right balance of both yields the best results. If however the frequency is too great (I saw the G-force ad 15 times in a day) and the reach is too narrow, after all how many cycling fans have been watching it on the ITV website, then the experience is pretty poor which leads to poor results. I am not the target audience for the film, but had I been then I probably would have been turned off by the ads, a negative result for Disney. It wasn’t even clickable!
Most ad-servers worth their salt enable frequency capping, either ITV need to learn how to use it or they should seriously think about limiting the ad spots in their TV shows when played online.
#1 by Malcolm Murdoch on July 20, 2009 - 4:33 pm
Problem is that not all buyers actually look at their frequency reports. They just see the impressions and put a big tick against the campaign.
Have a similar experience from watching Comedy Central clips. Am outside the US, seeing the same american ad five times in one sitting…
#2 by vaughan on July 20, 2009 - 5:59 pm
Good point Malcolm.
Hopefully as the market develops further the agencies, publishers and advertisers will agree and implement the standards that are needed to make everything work. Of course – if the data is available but people still ignore it then there isn’t much that we can do about that.
#3 by Bedouin on July 25, 2009 - 8:48 pm
Hi Vaughan,
Good angle: advertisement is changing so fast and many companies will disappear because they do not understand or refuse to understand the shift.
BTW, le tour de France was in Annecy this week.
Too fast for me…
Nourrédine.
#4 by vaughan on July 25, 2009 - 10:17 pm
Mr Rouibah!
I thought of you as the tour zipped around the lake, hope that all is well with you.
I think that some companies will struggle to make the move, others will take the opportunity to develop. Like every market change – there will be winners and losers.