Since the pandemic, VOD has accelerated in its growth and
acceptance among viewers, but its rapid progress is out-pacing our ability to
assess its full impact on the media business. This is why Tubi’s recent study
called, The Stream – 2021 Actionable Audience Insights for Brands, is a
welcomed addition to our knowledge of the state and the future of AVOD for both
advertisers and programmers. The launch of this expansive study involved a partnership between Tubi, which is owned by FOX, and an impressive roster of first and third party data sources in order to match the quantitative with the qualitative results. For Tubi’s Natalie Bastian, Vice President Marketing, the study opened up, “a treasure trove of insights we had at our disposal because we are the platform and are so focused on data, tech and our audience. It is one of the best untold stories.”
The Stream, The Study
In offering an overview of the findings, Bastian explained, “The report looks at the broader shifts of content consumption, the rapid growth in streaming but specifically in AVOD and how AVOD is at a pivotal point of scale. We are going to see fundamental shifts in how brands are shifting their TV strategies especially going into upfront this year. Scale, targeting and measurement are all coming to a head. Because of our scale, (the results are) representative of the broader AVOD streaming audience.” The report is timed to maximize the value of AVOD in the upfront as an addition to linear. “This is our first proprietary research study,” she added, but not the last. The Stream is poised to be an ongoing assessment of the marketplace and the importance of AVOD in it. “This is our stamp and our voice,” regarding, “consumption and engagement and the reasons why consumers are gravitating to streaming platforms.”
The study’s methodology was especially interesting to Melinda Staros, Tubi’s Director of Audience Research, “It was a meta-analysis of first party and third party data and our ability to thread that together. We used our first party audience data with all of our proprietary analytics – this was the first time we were using these to this scale.” The study also added Tubi’s qualitative research and, “all of the interviews we have done with our streamers for the past couple of years.” In addition, “We ran a custom B2B research study with Advertiser Perceptions,” which was then shared publicly and incorporated data from a number of different industry research sources such as MRI Simmons, TVSquared, Kantar and Nielsen. “There are many layers to peel back in this report,” she noted, “and it’s a compilation of all of these different methodologies and how they connect together.” The uniqueness of this study is its 360 degree holistic view of the industry.
The Stream, The Takeaways
For Staros, the study’s biggest takeaway, “has three layers. The first one is the industry where we found a discrepancy in the numbers. Seventy-nine percent of the people are streaming, growing daily and cutting the cord for cable. Streaming is so prevalent on the consumer side … and yet up to 90% of the video ad spend is still going to linear. There is a disconnection from the B2C side to the B2B side of the business.” But she is sure that will change in the next year. “From an audience perspective,” she continued, “it’s really the fact that it is incremental audience and that they are nationally representative. They are young and diverse as we see the national US population is. The industry isn’t necessarily used to that. The third is measurement. That is having substantial impact.”
For Bastian, an ah-ha insight was that, “When people in the marketplace talk about incremental reach the assumption is that it is incremental over linear TV. But what we found is that our audience is uniquely incremental to other streaming audiences as well.” She pointed out that while there is little overlap between Tubi and other AVOD audiences, there is some overlap between her service and Netflix which is not ad supported, thus enabling advertisers to reach those desirable audiences through Tubi. “We find that not only is our audience young, diverse and highly engaged, we can click into what they are watching, how long they are watching and when they are watching.” Tubi also boasts one of the lowest ad loads in TV – an average of 3 to 5 ads per hour.
The Stream, The Pandemic
While some industries have been negatively impacted by the pandemic, for Bastian, “The pandemic has across-the-board expedited the speed to stream for consumers. It has accelerated launch efforts for other platforms to come to market,” but, she added, “I think that will level out over time. I think that over the next year, consumers will say, ‘wow, I’m spending so much money in streaming’… I think SVOD will level off and AVOD will continue to rise … especially free AVOD,” which includes Tubi.
“In terms of the numbers we are seeing, the pandemic has had a big impact on the sudden jump in the number of people streaming and the amount of time they spend streaming,” noted Staros who added, ”one in five people have cancelled their paid streaming service because of Covid and that was especially true of people ages 18-34 (at 33%) who tend to have lower household incomes and tend to be early adopters.”
The Stream, The Value to Advertisers and Programmers
For both Bastian and Staros, the value of AVOD and Tubi in particular to advertisers is a no-brainer. Bastian explained that, “when you look at how linear and cable numbers are shifting and how streaming numbers are growing, you need to be able to diversify where you are spending your money.” She believes that buyers will pivot and make AVOD a must-buy with Tubi at the top of the list. “We have one of the largest, most engaged AVOD and we are nationally representative and we are highly targetable as well,” she stated.
For programmers, Staros shared that it is possible to take a program on linear that may skew older and, on a young platform like Tubi, age it down. “When FOX released the Masked Singer on its network, they had huge viewership, but it skewed significantly older,” she explained, “The big question was, if they put it on Tubi could they reach a younger audience or is the audience inherently older? The answer was that the platform dictates the type of viewership that you are going to get.”
The Stream, The Future
The future is bright for AVOD. “Streaming consumption is only going to continue … and in two years ad supported streaming will surpass cable … at a high level,” Bastian noted. The data supports this. “The more cord cutting, the more streaming, the more services, there are definite changes happening in the marketplace. The shift is really pronounced in that there are so many people who are not going to be reachable through linear that at some point we are going to hit a threshold. They are saying by 2023,” Staros concluded. The future certainly looks exciting, especially for AVOD.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
No comments:
Post a Comment