Trending Now: The future of TV advertising in 2023

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

As we reach the end of 2022, viewers globally are streaming more than ever and this has already disrupted TV advertising in 2023 and beyond – so what are the trends advertisers need to be aware of?

The Power of Free

Free ad-supported streaming TV services (FAST), which combine scheduled programming channels via live streaming and on-demand viewing, have sky-rocketed in popularity in the US. We are seeing this trend replicate globally and in India too. The attraction of these services for viewers is clear – scheduled programming alleviates the endless search process, but still provides on-demand content for the right moments.

FAST is still a relatively new concept around the globe, offered by a few players, including Samsung and Amazon MiniTV in India. However, the appetite for free content in return for watching ads holds massive appeal and has for many years now in India. Samsung’s FAST service Samsung TV Plus is already seeing take-up come to fruition with viewing time up 218% YoY between October 2021 and 2022 in India.

In the first half of this year, we saw streaming time on Samsung Smart TVs take the lion’s share of time spent viewing with 88% in streaming environments. However, only 28% of total digital spend is allocated to online video in India. Thus, showcasing the need for advertisers to understand the dynamic and rapidly evolving TV landscape. To keep high degrees of engagement, a data-driven approach to advertising will be critical so that brands continue to reach the right audience with the most relevant message at the best time.

The future of TV is a measurable one

The fragmentation of the TV landscape has meant that accurately measuring the unified performance of TV advertising is difficult due to legacy measurement, emerging streaming platforms, varying connected devices and cookie-less environments. This is a key issue for many TV and digital advertisers who want to better understand the measurement capabilities and insights available through the use of CTV.

Samsung Ads uses its proprietary automatic content recognition (ACR) data to help advertisers gain in-depth insights into CTV campaign performance. ACR data is a direct insight at the glass level into viewer habits. This means advertisers can target based on actual viewing behaviours. A recent CTV campaign on Samsung Smart TVs in India drove a 19% increase in online ad awareness and 10% in purchase intent. With the aim of driving key brand KPIs, Samsung Ads used enriched data and metrics to highlight a positive correlation between those exposed to ads and those who were likely to go on to purchase.

Increase focus on incremental reach

Advertisers should look to adopt a different approach to media spending in 2023 by busting silos across digital and TV teams. In order to get the best out of TV environments, those barriers must be broken down to effectively boost communication and allow digital thinking to be applied to linear campaigns and vice versa, streamlining spending, investments and exposure.

Reach has been a staple of TV for brands, but in an increasingly fragmented landscape, some consumers are harder to reach through traditional channels. Marketers now have to think beyond linear alone and consider how incremental reach can help capture viewers across both linear and CTV campaigns. Earlier this year, a major Indian auto manufacturer was able to reach an additional 480k+ households by targeting those not reached with linear ads on Samsung TVs. Almost three-quarters (73%) of the audience on Samsung TVs were exclusively digital and had not seen their linear campaign.

Deterministic data now provides targeted tailoring capabilities and crucial insights, making it easier to ascertain reach and control frequency, reducing duplication of ads and increasing exposure to previously untapped viewers or digital-only audiences. The future enables marketers to buy audiences not content.

First Party Data will play a key role in 2023

Complementing existing third-party datasets will be the way forward for brands wanting to reach the right audiences and optimise campaign strategies. They are already beginning to look beyond the mad scramble to unlock further targeting capabilities and instead, find value in overlaying enriched first-party data, including geographical location, attitudinal insights and vertical insights.

Whether it is to reach audiences who have been exposed to a competitor's ads or to ensure maximum reach across streamers, gamers and linear viewers, the use of first-party data from CTV can give marketers a more holistic and insightful view in both pre-planning and post-measurement.

Bolstering dynamic strategies with investment in first-party data will see rapid growth across India as it becomes a compliant source to truly understand customer preferences and find ways to reach the right audiences.