A Talk with Thinkbox

April 2015

Talk with Thinkbox at Mother London

Thinkbox are a marketing body for commercials in the United Kingdom. Their advice and research is free to advertising through their shareholders that include Channel Four, ITV, Sky Media, and Turner Media Innovations.They help agencies unearth research claiming that no data is too small. For them, TV needs to be at the heart of a campaign and urge agencies to think: TV and content and believe that this is the staple necessity in advertising effectiveness.

They understand that there are new tools in the ‘telly toolbox’. These are the things that have disrupted TV. A large chunk of their research is conducted by BARB (broadcasters audience research board) BARB catches everything on TV set through panel based methods and sound signals which informs them what device the content is being watched on.

One piece of research they conducted examined the hours of content watched per day online. The study compared three variables: advertisers perceptions of the amount of content watched online, non-advertisers perceptions of the amount of content watched online and finally the actual amount of content watched online per day. This study was conducted by ComScore, an internet technology company which measures what people do in the digital world and turns that information into insights and actions for clients. They handle over 1.6 trillion interactions each month from 172 countries.

Another area of research that was discussed was time-shifting, a the term used for recording programs to be viewed at a more convenient time. The motives for using this were discussed and its frequency of use over time. Their findings suggested that people don’t use time-shifting to avoid ads. The amount of people using it hadn’t increased all that much over time either, in fact the figure was remarkably level and hadn’t changed in years. To show time-shifting wasn’t used to avoid ads a study was conducted comparing the amount of people using time shifting on television channels with commercial advertising to BBC (BBC TV channels are broadcast without any commercial advertising, they account for over 30% approximately of total UK viewing).

Another topic that was touched on was the strong relationship between the time of transmission to the time when people watch their pre recorded shows, mainly due to anxieties about being out of the loop, or their FOMO instincts.

A study was conducted to investigate the effects of depriving live TV and catch up in selected households.

Thinkbox believe that television is a medium that serves the most needs, or the reasons people watch. They have grouped these needs into four categories: personal, context, social and content. These categories contain several sub categories: indulge, unwind, comfort, connect, experience and escape.

Research conducted by Playback 4 suggests that TV is the lead medium in effectiveness of return on investment, however this does not include creative cost.

Thinkbox discussed the changing role of data within advertising and how certain brands have integrated and utilized it in their campaigns. Developments such as SkyAdsmart use household data to determine what ads air in certain households. This means that different ads can be shown in different households even if those households are watching the same programs.

Clever ways of using data were brought to attention such as Coca Cola’s ability to put your name on the bottle of their advertisement on video on demand. The importance of multi screening was somewhat quenched by the average time that people spend per week, a mere 25 minutes according to Poetic 2013

For more insights and research on TV, visit the Thinkbox

Other Sources Used:

Bbc.co.uk

comscore.com