Leveraging the power of the screen

Authored by Prabhvir Sahmey, Senior Director, Samsung Ads India.

With increased economic pressures, cost-conscious consumers are changing the way they watch TV; shifting from paid-for content to free and ad-supported entertainment. The Connected TV landscape plays a pivotal role, with improved audience targeting capabilities and Smart TV adoption at an all-time high, the future looks bright for advertisers.

Streaming is surging

The TV audience has shifted. While streaming has been rising rapidly, most people today choose both linear and streaming, leading to an increasingly fragmented TV landscape and making TV buys not as simple as they used to be.

Samsung Ads’ proprietary automatic content recognition (ACR) data helps advertisers gain in-depth insights at the glass level into how audiences are interacting with their TVs and in which environments they are watching. Recent ACR data taken between December 2022 and February 2023 showed that 61% of Samsung Smart TV viewers in India are now consuming content across both linear and streaming.

However, delving deeper into this share of linear vs streaming, ACR data shows that despite the majority consuming content across both platforms, streaming still owns a significant share of TV time.  Between February 22 and February 2023, Indian viewers on Samsung TVs spent almost 90% of their total TV time in streaming environments. This has also been fuelled by the growth of Smart TV ownership across India, where in Q2 2022 our Smart TVs formed 89% of the total TV market across India, rising 33% from the previous year.

These viewing behaviours present new implications for advertisers and where to allocate budgets, as audiences are pivoting their engagement across various TV platforms.

AVOD growth outpaces SVOD and FAST will disrupt the space

While AVOD holds the lion’s share of viewing time, it is also the fastest growing in viewing time (up 24% compared to 13% up in SVOD and 6% down in linear between October and December 2022) and set to challenge SVOD’s long-standing global dominance. Within Streaming, India bucks the trend worldwide with Samsung ACR data revealing that over the last three months, Indian viewers have spent 63% of their total streaming time in AVOD environments compared to 37% in paid subscription video streaming apps.

In the face of inflation and the midst of economic headwinds, we can expect to see more viewers turning to ad-funded video services, searching for the premium entertainment they crave through more cost-effective alternatives.

Within AVOD, there is also a new type of service gaining ground, FAST. As a relatively new concept in the TV ecosystem, FAST delivers a linear-like experience over the internet and has so far, added fuel to the fire of audience fragmentation. A 2022 Now TV Study revealed that consumers will spend 100 days of their life deciding what to watch and 49% will be so overwhelmed they’ll end up watching nothing at all.

Offered by a few players, including Samsung in India, FAST is phrased as giving viewers access to curated content on scheduled channels, providing the answer to the nightly consumer problem around what to watch. Samsung’s FAST service Samsung TV Plus is already seeing rapid uptake over recent years with over 1600 channels launched globally, and over 85 channels in India alone) and viewer time is up 65% in the last three months. This new concept is solving the decision paralysis and subscription fatigue plaguing the modern-day viewer, and instead providing a shortcut to popular and sought-after content.

Research conducted in collaboration with VERVE also found that 4 out of 5 people in India are willing to watch ads if the content is free. Viewers considered ads within these environments to be shorter, more exciting, trustworthy and relevant. Not only this, but they also overperformed other platforms across multiple metrics and sparked a significant uplift in the value of ads within advertising video-on-demand (AVOD) and Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST), which combine scheduled programming channels via live streaming and on-demand viewing.

The power of free is well and truly alive in India. With the growth of free content set to rock the current status quo throughout this year and beyond, we can expect to see investment into these services subsequently rise to unseen levels. Reaching this dynamic and rapidly evolving audience is an emerging need advertisers must adopt to maintain high degrees of engagement with the most relevant messages at the best time. 

The advanced technology and targeting capabilities of connected TV’s open up a whole new world of possibilities when it comes to deeper, richer engagement with consumers. Therefore, advertisers should look at a different approach to media spend in 2023 by redefining the targeting strategy and harnessing connected TV data for both reach and precision.

Capturing the elusive streamer

Although AVOD continues to rise, there is a group of viewers who opt for ad-free environments. And while this group may continue to shrink, there will always be a portion of the audience that is “unreachable” in traditional AVOD environments. Ofcom recently reported that nine in ten 18-24-year-old adults bypass TV channels and head straight to streaming and on-demand environments when looking for something to watch, with Netflix the most common destination.

The recent challenges faced by marketers are showing no signs of slowing down. With economic uncertainty, complex ecosystems, and an evolving viewing landscape, it’s time to think beyond traditional formats and native ad solutions on Smart TVs. To reach elusive streamers, think creatively and position the brand in front of viewers outside of traditional ad breaks that currently dominate many marketing strategies.

One of the most effective means of doing this is through native ad solutions on Smart TVs. Through a more tailored content strategy, marketers now have the capabilities to make ads far more relevant to the moment and are proving to be an effective way of grabbing the attention of the viewer before they click through into non-ad-supported environments. Using ACR data is one way to identify audience segments within native placements to target based on viewer preferences and behaviours. Harnessing these valuable viewer insights will allow for targeting the likes of heavy streamers - who have historically been out of reach.

It’s time to embrace the big screen

The changes in the way consumers watch TV are consistently evolving and we’re witnessing a major shift in behaviour due to the rise of cost-conscious consumers. Now more than ever, we need to make every dollar count and work harder to place a bigger focus on outcomes and accountability.

With the accessibility of CTV, marketers have the opportunity in 2023 to redefine their strategies for the biggest screen in the house and think beyond linear or SVOD in isolation as they once did.