Six trends in TV advertising marketers must consider in 2023

TV has a strong history of building brand awareness and boosting sales, but brands’ ability to find their audience in this fragmented market continues to present a very real challenge. With 2023 ushering in further economic uncertainty and a continuation of the cost-of-living crisis, short-term performance metrics are similarly growing in importance.

Here are six top TV advertising trends for 2023 that brands must be aware of, to make best use of their marketing budgets next year.

1. The fragmentation of viewing will continue, and brands must follow where audiences go

The TV audience has become increasingly fragmented over time, and the proliferation of devices and platforms in the average household has made things more difficult for brands. Advertisers will need to keep adapting to the fragmentation challenge in 2023 as new ad-supported streaming services enter the market.

Addressable TV helps brands reach viewers wherever they are and target them more precisely, all through a single access point for planning, buying and reporting of campaigns. Having this bird’s eye view of a campaign is also key to maximising reach across the supply mix and measuring overall effectiveness.

2. The entertainment juggernauts will continue their rise – but the content will evolve

The likes of Amazon, Netflix, Disney and Apple will continue to grow their global dominance across TV, cinema and also gaming. As well as rolling out its new ad-funded subscription tier, Netflix, for example, is in the early stages of moving into the gaming space. The success of TV shows based on gaming titles, like The Witcher and the League of Legends-inspired Arcane, demonstrate that these types of cross-entertainment formats are a rich seam to tap into loyal audiences.

Local broadcasters are also maximising their IP to open up new revenue streams, for example ITV has agreed deals with Fortnite and Virtual Brand Group to bring popular shows such as I’m a Celebrity and The Voice into the metaverse.

It’s clear that consumers are broadening their definition of TV to include new platforms and formats. Advertisers need to respond to this by investing in different types of premium video content advertising, to ensure they achieve relevance and engagement in these new spaces.

3. Breaking media silos to focus on omnichannel performance

TV is still the most trusted medium, and it has proven to be able to cut through the digital noise. Despite addressable TV historically often being treated slightly separately, it will begin to integrate into and form a key part of cross-channel programmatic solutions.

In 2023, we’ll see that omnichannel marketing strategies will grow in importance. Advertisers will increasingly want to bring all addressable media closer together to create consistent and impactful brand experiences, and to improve campaign effectiveness. This addressable-first mindset will also fundamentally and irreversibly change the way all brands approach and plan campaigns.

4. Expect new audience targeting protocols

The shift from cookies, device IDs and IP addresses to new ways of targeting will continue in 2023, fuelled by stricter privacy controls and regulation. New targeting methods will emerge, with commerce data increasingly being used for marketing intelligence, campaign targeting and as a means for closed-loop measurement on TV.

Lifestyle, transactional and geolocation-based data can help advertisers to strike the balance of scale versus granularity and can be activated consistently within omnichannel solutions, giving addressable TV the opportunity to demonstrate its impact on performance directly against other digital media channels.

For example, when B&Q wanted to drive kitchen sales and raise awareness of a specific offer to increase footfall during the key January retail period, it chose addressable TV. Because the retailer was able to deliver its campaign creative to a specific segment who were most likely to engage and relate to the offer, B&Q saw a 5% uplift in actual store visits and a 23% increase in store visit conversion for those homes exposed to their creative through Finecast targeting.

5. A growing requirement to measure short-term performance effectively

The likely continuation of the economic downturn into 2023 will force advertisers to look for short-term wins when advertising on TV. They’ll need their campaigns to deliver quickly, as marketers feel increased pressure to demonstrate returns.

Advertisers will react to this trend by using multiple data sources to hone in on their most valuable audience segments and minimise media wastage. New-economy (often direct-to-consumer) brands will accelerate TV investments to win market share, whilst still delivering against the performance KPIs that are embedded in their businesses.

Likewise, established blue-chip brands will be conscious of the power of TV in maintaining share of market during a recession, but will also look for improved methodologies to show the short-term return.

One brand already achieving this is TalkTalk. It needed an audience-first marketing strategy to improve perceptions of its broadband services and to drive demand for its Future Fibre product.

Finecast created bespoke audiences using a combination of third-party data from companies such as YouGov, Experian and Acxiom, and supplemented this with interest-based aggregated and anonymised transactional data. The addressable TV campaign maximised attention and drove engagement across agreed KPIs.

Finecast partnered with Audience Project, which used a first-to-market web uplift solution enabled by Google Analytics data, to test the impact that addressable TV was having in driving demand and boosting website visits. The results revealed that 12% of site visits could be attributed to the addressable TV campaign, with a cost per incremental visit of just 15p.

6. There will be more focus on using the creative to drive outcomes

The last few years have been spent optimising technology and data, but 2023 will be the year when the spotlight turns on creative. The biggest opportunity now is to adapt TV creative by employing some of the tactics already commonplace in the digital space.

Brands want to use creative to drive outcomes. An example of this is the increased use of commerce-driving formats such as QR codes and interactive voice activations.

Innovations to improve creative and measurement will emerge, so advertisers can vary and tailor their messaging for different audience segments (whether that is pre-optimised creative or dynamic) and see the performance uplifts that those changes have driven.

Addressable TV is underpinned by relevance, and this also applies to the creative. Finecast’s ‘Thinking Inside the Box’ research found that people who deem an ad to be relevant are 18 times more likely to think that the brand is worth paying for, and 20 times more likely to find the creative asset appealing.

For example, when one travel brand used addressable TV to target three distinct audiences with three tailored ads to drive greater resonance, it saw a sales uplift of between 4% and 6% across all three audiences.

There’s no doubt 2023 will be a challenging year, with more focus than ever on the returns brands achieve on their advertising investments. When planning and executing their TV campaigns in the year ahead, the key is for marketers to ensure that advanced audience targeting capabilities and new creative opportunities flourish hand-in-hand, so that they remain as connected to their customers as possible.

To learn more, visit www.finecast.com.