While the vast majority of advertisers believe they’ll maintain their TV ad spending budget levels this year, more see increases than decreases on the horizon for advanced TV options, per results from a Videology report [pdf]. In particular, almost one-third expect their spending on OTT/connected TV to increase, compared to just 6% envisioning a decrease.
Recent data from SpotX supports that perception, as it reported an 18x increase in global OTT video ad spending in 2017 on its platform, jumping from 8% of overall ad budgets in October 2016 to 26% of spend in October 2017.
Meanwhile, survey data from Salesforce indicates that 44% of advertisers worldwide are already advertising on connected TVs, with another 29% planning to do so this year.
Returning to the Videology survey, and more advertisers plan to increase than decrease their spending on data-enabled TV (22% and 5%, respectively) and addressable TV (24% and 9%, respectively) this year.
There’s less enthusiasm for linear TV, for which more advertisers plan to cut (21%) than hike (12%) spending. Nonetheless, two-thirds expect to maintain their linear TV budgets
But while linear TV may not have quite the same outlook, it remains core to advertisers’ budgets, perhaps because they feel that TV ads have the greatest impact on consumers.
In fact, 51% of respondents classified their linear TV investments as being “core” to their strategy, with other TV options such as OTT/connected TV (31%), data-enabled TV (24%) and addressable TV (22%) not yet reaching that level.
To be fair, research suggests that most advertisers see TV and digital video as complementary, so these investments aren’t necessarily in competition.
Cross-Screen Measurement’s Still the Big Challenge
When it comes to TV and video advertising, consistent cross-screen measurement is still the top challenge faced by advertisers, per the report, as it has been for some time now despite continued industry efforts.
Other key challenges include how to best leverage data and how to divide budget among screens, per the study, with fewer concerned with scale, control, or working with too many different vendors.
The full report is available here [pdf].
About the Data: The report is based on a survey of 300 advertisers and agency professionals.
