Brian Wieser recently forecasted that, by 2027, linear and streaming TV will lose up to 25% of available impressions.
To quote AdExchanger Associate Editor Alyssa Boyle’s reaction to this prediction: “Huh?”
Frankly, the TV market’s vanishing impression problem is even more concerning than the numbers indicate.
We know that viewing is rapidly migrating from linear to streaming. According to a recent Nielsen estimate, streaming now accounts for 39% of US viewing, more than either set top box or over the air.
And we know two core truths about streaming and advertising: Viewers have a much lower tolerance for spotload on streaming than we do on linear, and pretty much all the streaming platforms have adopted pricing tiers that enable viewers to pay their way out of advertising.
This latter point means that those 25% of vanishing impressions will come disproportionately from the very people with the most money to spend. Consumers that buy the most stuff will become the most elusive cohort. That doesn’t sound good for advertisers.
Scarcity isn’t all bad
The digital age led us to believe that impressions were limitless. In the era of pay-per-click, websites would just place banner after banner at the bottom of their pages. There was no such thing as a website selling out. But those limitless impressions weren’t building anyone’s brand.
Maybe, just maybe, a little impression scarcity is a good thing.
Let’s accept the premise that there will be fewer impressions in the TV marketplace. And let’s also assume that advertisers will still want to maximize reach to engage as many potential buyers as possible.
If impressions decline and reach remains constant, then, inevitably, ad frequency must decline. It’s a tautology. That means we need to make lower frequency work harder.
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This is not necessarily a bad thing. As viewers, we understand how annoying it is to see the same ad over and over. Tell me you aren’t hearing the “1-877-Kars4Kids” song in your head right now.
There needs to be a new parameter to media math beyond “how many” and “how often.”
Targeting mood
We need to introduce a third dimension, which involves the quality of the cognitive experience the consumer is having with the impression. Think of this as “how good.”
Advertiser interest in understanding viewers’ mood and mindset explains why resonance and attentiveness have been getting so much play lately. There is empirical data to suggest that the quality of the consumer’s cognitive experience with the creative – the extent to which the ad registers, resonates and captivates – actually trumps frequency in driving outcomes. Indeed, it seems crazy that we haven’t focused more on the quality of that cognitive experience all along.
One or two resonant impressions – in the right content environment, with the right creative execution, delivered to the right consumer – can drive results better than, say, 10 impressions that don’t account for messaging, program content and the consumer’s receptiveness to the creative.
So let’s not be frightened of a video environment with fewer impressions.
Instead of conceptualizing media delivery on two dimensions (reach and frequency), let’s conceptualize it on three dimensions: reach, frequency and resonance. (And yes, there are measurement companies providing data offerings to support this third dimension.)
In this context, we can maintain reach, throttle back on frequency, but drive better results by reaching an attentive consumer in a resonant fashion. This can make advertising work better for buyers and sellers, while improving the viewing experience – a virtuous circle where everybody wins.
“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.
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