Connected TV: Connected India Watching Television
Television’s past in India.
Televisions can be found in billions of households around the world today but 100 years ago, nobody even knew about it. The First Electronic Television was designed in 1927 by an inventor named Philo Taylor. India got its first TV service in 1959 & Dr Rajinder prasad (President of India) inaugurated it from Vigyan Bhavan of Delhi. In those earlier days, there were just two shows of one hour each in a week & government kept a count of TV sets because you needed a license & pay fee to own a TV. Color TVs reach Indian homes in 1982 & it was ad agency Lintas who created first TV commercial Liril’s in 1985. DD received its higher viewership & ad revenue in 1987 by Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana & BR Chopra’s Mahabharat in 1988. In 1991 Congress govt allowed private & foreign broadcasters to engage in broadcasting & channels like CNN, STAR TV and private domestic channels such as Zee TV, ETV & others started satellite broadcasts in India. Much Before Netflix, & Spotify it was Doordarshan who brought international shows & music in India like Star Trek, Didi , oshino & international singers like Michel Jackson , Whitney Houston.
There are five basic types of television in India: broadcast or "over-the-air" television, unencrypted satellite or "free-to-air", Direct-to-Home (DTH), cable television, IPTV and OTT or over the top services . Over-the-air and free-to-air TV is free with no monthly payments while Cable, DTH, IPTV & OTT requires a subscription. As audience and advertising grew on TV, India developed its audience metrics & rating called TRP to tells which channel and the programme are viewed most & indicates the popularity of a TV channel or a programme. First audience metrics was DART (Doordarshan audience research team) which used to calculate these ratings as that time only channel available was Doordarshan. DART still exists and provide TV viewing pattern of rural population of India. As market became fragmented with many international & private broadcasters, TV joint industry body appointed TAM (television audience measurement) which was joint venture between Nielsen & IMRB. Around 2010 advertising industry body created BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) which became world largest scientific industry body. It was set up according to guidelines of the Indian Ministry of Information & Broadcasting & uses audio watermark technology to measure viewership of TV channels & measures time-shifted viewing & simulcasts.
Television’s Present in India.
TV is still at the centre of the India’s family living room and most powerful way for brands to connect and interact with consumers. Indians are watching more television than ever but mostly on connected television which allow them to receive and display two types of content on a big screen.
1) Programming from broadcast and cable TV networks, delivered via internet.
2) Digital-only streaming content (ex:- YouTube, Netflix, Prime video & Hotstar)
Connected TV advertising combines the targeting capability of digital ads which means all ads will be served programmatically, the convincing power of video which give brands a chance to tell their story in 15 to 20 sec video commercial & captive audience of television without the big price tag, reaching cord-cutters and highly engaged viewers.
To understand the audience data, Connected TV manufactures i.e. Samsung, LG, Mi & others uses a technology called ACR (automatic content recognition). When user install a smart TV, manufacturers take a permission from initial setup screen to track what you are watching and in return provide suggestion of similar shows/movies. ACR data received from TV manufactures are raw in nature & this needs to be combined by third party data providers like Beatgrid, kantar, ACR Cloud, Zapr Media Labs , Shazam who gives anonymized ACR data sets which tell markets about audience data points i.e. viewer watching linear Vs OTT, what shows/ commercials they are watching on a second-by-second basis, what are viewers demographics, IP address & location along with viewing behaviours like content preferences, ad completion rates, average watch time, channel surfing patterns, completed view rates, and other parameters.
Bring Linear TV & CTV together to achieve incremental reach: -
Linear TV still has a strong reach with the TV viewing population of India & hybrid viewing pattern is likely to remain in place for years to come. Instead of having separate teams for linear and connected TV buying, marketers/agencies are bringing those specialties together to achieve the goal of reaching viewers on any screen. ACR can bridge the linear & connected TV ecosystem to achieve incremental reach for campaigns.
Here are few ways to do it ...
Connecting the linear and CTV ecosystems can bring incredible benefits to how advertisers tap into quality inventory, reach audiences across screens and measure and attribute what matters.
Commercial break in CTV: -
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The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)’s VAST 3.0 first introduced the concept of ad podding in 2012. There are limited commercial break on CTV, hence advertisers shall use ad podding to serve best creative to viewers. Ad pod is a term used in CTV advertising to specify multiple ads sequenced together and played back-to-back within a single ad break, like linear TV. If advertiser start using Ad pods in CTV, they can avoid running ads alongside direct competition. In pre pod bidding scenario, advertises can choose to bid for first slot in a selected content & pay the premium or do the ad-sequencing. Another vital benefit of ad pods is that publishers can ensure, users never get duplicate ads within a single ad break hence for advertiser its appealing as it guarantees they won’t have any wasted impressions. At CTV publisher ends they can find out whether viewers watch all ads in a pod or skip any, which could indicate they might have too many ads in a single pod or if viewers are more likely to skip preroll,mid-roll or post roll.
Best of both world: - Data & CTV
Connected TV function just like any programmatic campaign & you can make full use of data. Let’s say you are an apparel brand preparing for the off-season discount sales and want to build a campaign that gives 30% discount to customers who have downloaded your app or abandoned a cart. you can use any demand side platform to reach their first-party audience as they’re streaming their favorite shows on connected TV. Most of the DSPs platforms also have audience extension/expansion available in CTV. By utilizing contextual and geo signals, DSP Platforms will create a model to find CTV streamers who are similar to your first party audience. There are limitation of scale with first party data & for to solve this you can use third party data segments created data providers like lotame , eyeota , LiveRamp which offers custom and ready-to-target pre-packaged TV audiences categorized by Program, Network, Show, Genre, Viewer Type, Dayparts, and Tentpoles that can be activated through any DSP. Another example of first-party data usage on smart TV comes from Samsung. Samsung audience advisor is an analytics/planning tool that uses Samsung’s own first-party data & combined with third-party data, to give advertisers & agencies a view into how much time specific audiences are spending viewing AVOD, as well as their content preferences.
CTV Ad-Fraud & Brand safety: The Game of Cat & Mouse
Digital ad fraud is the biggest hindrance to adex growth globally. After the cyber-crime, digital ad fraud is possibly becoming second largest organized crime & as a newer advertising channel CTV has been major target for fraudsters. The recent ICEBUCKET operation uncovered by the White Ops team has opened advertisers eyes to an alarming threat in the CTV space. In the ICEBUCKET operation, fraudsters “spoofed” the IP addresses of 2 million devices in 30+ countries when 99% of the traffic was coming from just one country – the US. The marketer then buys the CTV ad space thinking it would be served to a particular group of people, but ad spend ends up to bots. Another CTV ad fraud was detected by Doubleverfiy involves fraudulently setting up online SSAI servers and then producing CTV inventory across an unlimited number of devices, apps, and IPs.
Not just advertisers but supply side partners, device manufactures, server-side ad insertion all of them need to be vigilant & opt for Ad fraud solutions that covers all type of frauds like app fraud, device spoofing, Server-side Ad Insertion (SSAI) manipulation, non-stop ads & malware-hijacked CTV devices that run invisible ads in the background.
Brand safety & suitability: - Brand safety & suitability is a difficult challenge to solve in CTV space because of sheer volume of content & lesser understanding of content sentiments.
We need two level of filters.
Here are tactics that advertiser can put in place to protect themselves.
Television’s future in India.
Cord cutting audience will continue to grow and next 5 to 7 years all TV in India likely to become smart television with an ability to watch on-demand content, stream music, view photos, and do video calls all from your TV itself. Future TV will be become more personalized & social and will have a user profile, where based on users like or dislike it will recommend content and provide opportunity to co-watch or share what you are watching with your friends & families. Smart TV will become portable as most of TV will start using cloud computing & wherever you go, you can watch your favorite content anytime anywhere. In future TV is not just for watching as OEM are adding services like Gaming and health & fitness. Samsung in its smart TV adding a gaming hub where users tap into any of the video game libraries & play game without a console or PC. Remote controlled TV will be become outdated as tech companies are adding Voice based & XR controlled smart televisions. The technology to shop directly on your TV’s interface is still developing and somehow limited to QR codes but tech platforms like Amazon & Google are testing shoppable content ads. Imagine you watched a movie on amazon prime and would like to buy dress that actor is wearing. Amazon uses a service called “X-Ray” which is an exclusive set of features on Prime Video that helps you experience more of the stuff you love to watch, while you watch it. This is available on favorite movies, series and live sports. Amazon could likely integrate a similar functionality called “purchase” where we’ll eventually also see the actor’s purchasable products and buy it on amazon.
YouTube already provides video action campaigns to connected televisions. When a viewer sees a Video action campaign on their TV, they are invited through a URL at the bottom of their screen to continue shopping on the brand’s website from their desktop or mobile device — without interrupting their viewing session.
Managing Editor, MediaNews4U
2yVery informative with easily understandable presentation with relevant leads for service providers in multiple functions. Keep up the good work.
Driving Corporate Success with Specialized Digital Marketing Training | Doctoral Candidate - Gen AI
2yPrashant Nandan I am also an advocate of CTV, I believe and have been vocal in many training that CTV is the future as the audience is shifting towards CTV.
Chief Executive @ Kiaos Marketing Pvt Ltd | Digital Marketing consultant
2yPrashant Nandan thanks for the very detailed post. As we bring linear and connected TV together a lot of discovery is yet needed in the measurement front to bring the linear and the digital world on a common currency ....