“Data-driven technologies, artificial intelligence, digital tools and process are tremendous opportunities to reinforce TV as the media of the future. In a world more and more global, TV produce original, diverse and local content. In a society which is every year more and more polarised, TV brings people together, includes everyone. In a world of anonymity, we bring awareness and trust. That’s core values to make TV a key factor for diverse and vibrant democracy.”
Gilles Pélisson, Chairman and CEO, TF1 Group, France
Transcript:
“Hi. I am Gilles Pélisson, chairman and CEO of the TF1 group in France. This message is just to share with you how much I believe that, more than ever, television has been the media most resilient and, demonstrating following the pandemic, that the social down the creates between people generations young and older is more than ever as significant. We have experienced, of course, during the pandemic like everybody else, a surge in our ratings with millions of people watching television, connecting themselves to hear about the news and about, you know, watching and trying to divert themselves when they couldn’t leave their homes.
The good news is that by the end of this year, we are seeing people staying, watching television and enjoying our newscast, our fiction, our drama, our entertainment and movies more than ever. It has been incredible ratings showing the resilience and the way people are attached to that media. It is about connecting people together. It is about fighting against fake news, which in our world is really a trauma, and then making sure that we have the most significant programs for the largest audience.
For the advertisers, it means also that never in this world a media has the potential reach that television can demonstrate every day. And we are seeing larger advertisers and smaller ones coming to television even back after having trying digital. The good news is also that addressable TV and advertising means that we can combine the best of both worlds; having the reach of the television media in a linear sense, in the traditional sense, and the new capability to reach and target specific audiences like on the internet. Expanding our media to the digital world is certainly the way to go.
So, we are very excited about both having still a very strong linear television more than ever, but yet combining it with the digital power. Thank you.”
“It is undeniable that television is under a profound digital transformation. But we have to admit that probably TV is the media that has best adapted to the new situation. And this has always been in the past, and it will always be in the future.
Just a few years ago, when we talked about TV, we were talking about a device placed in the living room of different homes. Nowadays, tv is a 360-degree factory of premium content, that enables the connection between viewers and brands.
We are involved in great business transformation. In the very beginning, as a Free-to-Air TV we were focused on buying content, mixing it properly and selling advertising. Now we operate at multiple levels to maximize the value of that content, producing it for other players, launching SVOD platforms and everything under a coordinated distribution strategy to let us operate in several markets at once.
Digitalization has widened our opportunities. All broadcasters across Europe are pushing the development of Addressable TV and SVOD platforms in every market they operate. We are entering into new markets such as influencers, exporting our attributes of quality and brand safe to all the businesses in which we now operate.
But our main concern is not the challenge to adapt our businesses and organisation to the digital framework, but the legal asymmetry we are facing in our every day job. We demand a fair level playing field. We are far from having it. We are not asking for privilege, but a fair business framework. The later the regulators face that challenge, the worse it will be for the players.
So, the main challenge is not whether to transform, but how do we drive it, that has maintained our values which is brand safe, which is quality, which is premium content. And building together with all our stakeholders an environment friendly to our consumers and to our advertisers in order for them to find a reliable and safe environment in which they do business.”
Fabrice Mollier, President, Canal+ Brand Solutions, France
Transcript:
“TV has always been the best-measured medium. You know every day how many people have seen your ads or your shows. TV has already proven for years and years that it is the most efficient medium in terms of sales and awareness for brands.
But there is an increasing need for brands to use their KPIs, their data to prove that their investment in TV is the best efficient in terms of sales, of visits on their websites and so on. The good news for television is that most people are now seeing TV in the connected world, so we can, as TV sales houses and TV operators, we are now able to gather some data, to connect to the data of the advertisers and then prove that each ad break on each day-part on each channel has a big efficiency in sales. It is true on sales, it is true on visits on the websites, it is also true on brand awareness. There is such a fantastic world that the data is bringing to TV, not only in addressable campaigns but also on linear TV.
And the fact that TV is seen also now on mobile devices, on PCs, on tablets, increases the fact that we are able to collect data and propose it to the advertisers. So, there is a fantastic world for increasing awareness and efficiency measures – happy World TV Day!”
“Over the years, research has consistently shown that TV advertising is more trusted than any other medium. For example, almost 40% of viewers – young and old – say it’s their most trusted medium.
But in recent times, we’ve seen the depth of that trust for ourselves, when the nation turned to television as the pandemic unfolded. Here in the UK, almost 20 million viewers would regularly tune in to hear the Prime Minister address the nation.
But TV did more than just inform its viewers. We united the nation around powerful, positive and uplifting moments in the nation’s cultural calendar. And as we emerge from the pandemic, TV’s ability to bring the nation together is still just as evident: as we have seen with an exceptional summer of sport.
The world was gripped as the UEFA Euros tournament played out: in the UK alone, over 18 million people watched the England v Denmark semi-final on ITV. Then there was the Tokyo Olympics, and then the Paralympics, and millions more watched the swift path to victory by Emma Raducano in the US Open.
But TV doesn’t just unite us. It influences how we think, feel and act.
ITV, as you all know, is a commercial public service broadcaster, and we take our role in shaping the cultural conversation very seriously, as we use our reach and our scale to drive positive change.
In a year of unprecedented challenges that took a toll on the nation’s mental and physical health, our research shows over 7 million people took action as a result of seeing ITV campaigns.
“Britain Get Talking”, something we are very proud of, is our high-profile campaign fronted by Ant and Dec (two of our most loved presenters) and it aims to encourage people to communicate more, and better, as a way to improve mental health. It’s already started over 6 million conversations and has driven 3 million people to seek advice from Mind, the UK’s biggest mental health charity.
We encouraged 1.5 million school children to walk or run a mile a day, helping to get the nation’s children taking more exercise in support of “The Daily Mile”.
Our “Eat them to defeat them” campaign in partnership with an alliance of supermarkets, got 890,000 children to want to eat more vegetables.
It’s not surprising that this positive and powerful platform works for brands too.
A topical ad, following the cardiac arrest of Danish footballer Christian Erikson, led to 60,000 enquiries about CPR training for the British Heart Foundation, and helped grow one-off donations by over 17%.
Retailer Waitrose launched “Pick For Britain” and recruited a new land army of British citizens to make sure our favourite fruit and veg were still picked during the pandemic, to reach our supermarket shelves.
TV gives advertisers a trusted, safe, premium quality, positive and uplifting home for their brands.
Wolfgang Link, CEO, ProSiebenSat1 Entertainment Group, Germany
Transcript:
“Television is and remains the most important medium. One the one hand, for viewers, no other medium has such a high usage time as TV. On the other hand, for advertisers, no wonder because after all TV is the medium with the highest value for our customers. Its reach and its environment quality are both outstanding. And that generates the highest return on investment in the media industry. Because TV provides a significant branding effect but also contributes to sales.
For example, TV advertising reaches new groups of buyers through the broadness of the target group. This has a direct impact on sales of the advertised product. But as a media company, we are not resting on our laurels, of course. Smart solutions increase the value of TV advertising, for media planning, even further. After all, new forms of advertising are evolving in addition to the traditional advertising on linear TV. Addressable TV, targeting options and programmatic solutions offer completely new advertising opportunities for customers in our number one medium.”
Wolfgang Link, CEO, ProSiebenSat1 Entertainment Group, Germany
Transcript:
“Relevance and attitude make us distinctive. We provide orientation, we provide the necessary context, prevalent issues in our society. The global pandemic has shown how important trustworthy media brands are for our viewers and how strongly the medium of television connects people across all age groups and provides security. In Germany alone we reach an average of 60 million people a month with our stations. We aim to use this reach to benefit society. With this reach we clearly oppose racism, hate, discrimination and fake news. With this reach TV makes people think, laugh, cry, discuss and relax.”
Stewart Johnson, SVP of Sales and Sports, Bell Media, Canada
Transcript:
“Through its unmatched attention-grabbing and emotion-evoking content and advertising, we know that TV is simply unparalleled in its ability to build brands. However, there has been a false narrative in the industry, that centres on the idea that TV only works as the top-of-the-funnel brand builder, exclusively used for mass awareness. It’s time to dispel this myth. While the top of the funnel remains critically important, TV also offers the opportunity to work its way right down the funnel. Thanks to increasingly efficient attribution tools, now available to advertisers, not only has TV demonstrated that it builds bands like no other media can but it has also proven its worth as a performance driver.
In addition to TV’s unsurpassed reach, we now have enhanced targeting capabilities. From the introduction of audience management tools that integrate broadcasters’ first party data, to the development of custom audience segments.
And we can prove it works. Attribution continues to gain momentum, both through the integration of first party data and through the development of external tools that are helping both the buy and supply side. In the coming months, it will be even easier for advertisers to accurately correlate their TV spend with short-term sales and other business effects.
We know TV has tremendous halo effect on other media and its impact lasts far longer than other advertising. Currently there isn’t anything that works better throughout the buying-funnel than TV. And that is why we see new advertisers, like digital companies, who have more than doubled their TV spend in the past five years, increasingly turning to TV to drive growth.
TV is already the best-in-class brand building medium, but the major advancements the industry has made in audience targeting and attribution, both at our company and at the other Canadian broadcasters, demonstrates why TV is a trusted performance driver now and how it will continue to play an indispensable role in the future of advertising.”
“Hi I’m Mark Frain, Foxtel Media CEO, part of the Foxtel Group. I run the advertising arm for the Foxtel Group. It’s great to be part of the celebration for World TV Day. When I think what was going on 25 years ago, probably shows like Everybody Loves Raymond would have been the number one show across platforms globally. So much has changed since then and we are really now on a path to a streaming future, I think globally.
Linear TV has long been the battle ground for which our audiences are and which we deliver for clients. And now we are entering into this rapidly advancing streaming, digital world. That is certainly what we are looking at as a business moving forward and if I look at the Foxtel Group, only five years ago, 8% of our subscribers came from streaming. That has just gone over 50% and that has gone over 50% in the last 2 or 3 years. Significant advancement. We are going to continue to do a lot of testing in this environment. I think from a streaming perspective, it’s great that it gives us such data, such technology to really take the future of television to a very different place that it has been in the last 2 or 3 years.
Great to be part of the day. I can’t wait to share globally some of the things that we are going to learn about the future of television. Thank you.”