You­Tube and Con­nec­ted TV: Why and How TV Ad­vert­ising Needs to Be Re­thought

Lin­ear tele­vi­sion has suffered a steady loss of reach in re­cent years, es­pe­cially in the young tar­get group. At the same time, the pop­ular­ity of streaming-​on-​demand con­tin­ues to rise. Con­nec­ted TV is be­ne­fit­ing from this. CTV is a com­bin­a­tion of tele­vi­sion and In­ter­net ac­cess, en­abling users to ac­cess on­line con­tent on the screen of their smart TVs. This makes it pos­sible to reach groups of people who do not con­sume lin­ear tele­vi­sion. A study by Gold­bach in 2022 showed that 75% of re­spond­ents in the DACH re­gion already use a smart TV. Ac­cord­ing to the IGEM Di­gi­mon­itor 2022, the pro­por­tion of people re­ceiv­ing “in­ter­net con­tent” via their TV set has in­creased by 71% since 2020 to al­most 2.5 mil­lion people in German-​ and French-​speaking Switzer­land. CTV thus be­ne­fits not only from a broad reach, but also from the di­gital strengths of tar­get­ing.

For a long time, com­mer­cials on lin­ear TV were con­sidered su­per­ior to on­line video cam­paigns, des­pite de­clin­ing usage, be­cause they gen­er­ated high-​quality ad­vert­ising ex­pos­ure. After all, TV ad­vert­ising is con­sumed from the com­fort of the sofa. View­ers are in a “lean-​back” po­s­i­tion: re­laxed and more will­ing to focus their at­ten­tion on the ad­vert­ising being played on their TV screen.

This con­trasts with “lean-​forward” chan­nels like so­cial media, where users are much more act­ive and con­sciously look­ing for spe­cific con­tent, such as a quick ex­plan­a­tion or a brief dis­trac­tion. Ad­vert­ising ac­cept­ance de­creases sig­ni­fic­antly in this con­text.

How­ever, this does not mean that lean-​back media are auto­mat­ic­ally bet­ter than lean-​forward formats, but that both offer users dif­fer­ent in­cent­ives. Ad­vert­isers should there­fore adapt their strategy to the ex­pect­a­tions, mood, and be­ha­vior of con­sumers on the re­spect­ive chan­nel to achieve the greatest pos­sible im­pact for their cam­paigns.

On­line video is often viewed by ad­vert­isers as fast-​moving and highly de­pend­ent on the short at­ten­tion span of con­sumers. But the in­creas­ingly hy­brid use on dif­fer­ent devices also in­flu­ences the way of re­cep­tion. The clear cat­egor­iz­a­tion into lean-​back and lean-​forward no longer ex­ists for on­line videos.

A prime ex­ample of this is the You­Tube plat­form, which around 3.5 mil­lion Swiss people use reg­u­larly ac­cord­ing to the MACH Strategy Study of 2022. You­Tube videos can be con­sumed via smart­phone and desktop as well as via CTV in the same way as tra­di­tional tele­vi­sion. With CTV, You­Tube is thus con­sumed in lean-​back mode, with the ad­di­tional ad­vant­age of a sig­ni­fic­antly lower ad­vert­ising load than on lin­ear TV. In ad­di­tion, videos are often viewed in com­pany rather than alone.

Ac­cord­ing to a study by You­Tube, on­line videos con­sumed via Con­nec­ted TV are also in no way in­ferior to clas­sic tele­vi­sion when it comes to ad­vert­ising re­call. This res­ult was con­firmed in prac­tical im­ple­ment­a­tions for San­itas, among oth­ers, last year. Along­side the SRG chan­nels and meta-​platforms, You­Tube Con­nec­ted TV was a key suc­cess factor for the out­stand­ing res­ults of our San­itas case.

In cam­paign im­ple­ment­a­tions, we reg­u­larly found that even videos that ex­ceeded a play­back time of 25 seconds achieved high video com­ple­tions of up to 70%, es­pe­cially thanks to CTV. Sev­eral mar­ket re­search pro­jects con­firmed the ad­vert­ising ef­fect in terms of ad­vert­ising re­call, which ul­ti­mately led to a sig­ni­fic­ant in­flu­ence on brand fa­mili­ar­ity at San­itas and changed the pref­er­ence struc­tures for cus­tomer ac­quis­i­tion in the fall.

The grow­ing pop­ular­ity of Con­nec­ted TV and the suc­cess­ful place­ment of long com­mer­cials mean that mar­keters must think dif­fer­ently about the me­dium of TV. For ex­ample, with the high-​reach chan­nel You­Tube and, in many coun­tries, ad­vert­ising place­ments on Net­flix, new op­tions are emer­ging along­side or in com­bin­a­tion with clas­sic lin­ear TV chan­nels.

It is there­fore ad­vis­able to ree­valu­ate the be­ne­fits and dis­tri­bu­tion of ad­vert­ising budgets for video cam­paigns and to ad­just strategy and media plan­ning ac­cord­ingly.