LONDON: There will be no death of TV, argues Jeremy Pounder, Head of Media Futures at Mindshare, as emerging forms of video transpire to become part of a larger video offer, according to his investigation.

Writing in an article featured in this month’s Admap, Pounder, who bases his argument on a series of interviews with industry expert interviews, in addition to primary GroupM and secondary UK research, says we are entering an era of ‘more’.

“More consumption: While linear TV will decline, overall viewing to the TV set will be broadly stable and we will see further strong growth in mobile video viewing”, he writes.

Though there will be more TV, its traditional form will fragment to the tune of video proliferation. A diversity of forms, from live TV to VR to the humble mobile, will retain the substantial scale of video. SVOD will continue to expand.

Notably, he says, more on demand viewing will usher in the dominant phase of personalised content delivery – while the platforms that allow this have to date been insufficiently transparent, greater scrutiny and third party validation will allow greater planning capabilities across video platforms.

Yet linear TV has proved more resilient over the last five years than many expected. Nevertheless, in the last 7 years live viewing has declined by 19%. In contrast, on demand video – either on a broadcaster platform or through a subscription – will grow around 45% over the next five years to reach a third of all individuals’ TV viewing.

From an advertising angle, the outlook is less positive, however, as “research shows that 30% of all TV viewing is accompanied by activity on the smartphone. Unsurprisingly, the ad break is more adversely affected, with 33% of all ad breaks seeing attention diverted to the smartphone.”

While addressable advertising could be a remedy for this in future, the projections still skew to non-addressable advertising’s continued dominance, as by 2022, linear TV will continue to account for 64% of all ad minutes viewed per day, down from 84% in 2016.

“Despite the growth of online video, linear TV will continue to dominate time spent in absolute terms for all but the youngest of audiences and therefore continue to play a critical role in delivering scale”, writes Pounder.

“We believe the most successful brands will be those who have a deep understanding of the way their target audience is consuming video and are able to intelligently execute across all forms.”  

Sourced from Admap