by Tess Alps, Chief Executive, Thinkbox

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago optimism was in scarce supply in the commercial TV industry – as it was for everyone. The darkest, deepest recession most can remember, with a brutal 10% decline in TV revenue, caused widespread pain.

Things feel very different today. 2010 turned out to be a record-breaking year for TV on many fronts. A cautious but well-earned optimism has returned to commercial TV, matched by a profound and welcome turnaround in the perception of TV advertising, exemplified by Deloitte’s recent report on TV’s ‘super media’ status and strong future.

The numbers tell the story. According to Nielsen Media Research, TV spot advertising revenues in 2010 were up 18% on 2009 and our own estimates place total TV revenue growth (spot and sponsorship) at about 15%. Linear TV outperformed the market, and all other media it appears, to set a new high for TV ad revenues. This is a gratifying performance and the forecasts for TV advertising in 2011, while unlikely to produce such dramatic year on year growth,are encouraging.

Every new media development is boosting TV’s effectiveness

All this is excellent news for TV broadcasters, but it is also excellent news for advertisers. Greater investment in TV advertising leads to increased investment in TV programming, which leads to better content and an even better environment for TV advertisers.

Along with revenues, linear TV viewing also increased in 2010 to the highest level since records began: over four hours a day . This follows the extraordinary pattern of growth set in recent years but it is unrealistic to expect the linear broadcast viewing levels to continue to grow indefinitely. We think 2010 probably saw the peak – although we’re happy to be proved wrong.

In addition to this, watching TV on-demand and on devices other than a TV set also continued to grow .

It is now obvious that viewers want to watch TV as it happens and, if they can’t, they want to catch-up as soon after the event as possible. This enduring popularity stems from a basic human desire to share experiences and it shows no sign of diminishing.

Our recent Tellyporting research, where we took people into the near future of TV, re-emphasised the enormous and undimmed appeal of the live, linear TV experience in the UK as new ways to watch TV grow, and showed that viewers are increasingly using on-demand services to catch up with something they’ve missed.

Ideally, people want to watch any catch-up TV services on the beautiful big TV screens they have invested in whenever possible, and in 2011 more opportunities to do that will appear – whether via connected TV sets, connected boxes or games consoles.

But, technology aside, at the heart of the reasons why commercial TV had an improved year is, of course, the fact that viewers were treated to a feast of great TV programming. My favourites ranged from the sublime Downton Abbey, This Is England ’86, The Walking Dead and The War You Don’t See to the delightfully ridiculous Take Me Out, The IT Crowd and 30 Rock. Your favourites are probably very different, but that is the joy of today’s TV; programmes and channels for every taste. We also enjoyed some wonderful TV ads, many of which delivered instant business returns for their brands. The winners of our Thinkboxes are emblematic of the world-beating quality of TV advertising produced in the UK.

2010 saw the dawn of a new era of social TV, when people acknowledged and embraced the amazing and powerful relationship between TV and online social media. We discovered this for ourselves with the social media reception for our own TV ad campaign featuring Harvey the multi-talented dog, who at the time of writing has over 12,000 Facebook ‘likes’, countless tweets and over 1.5 million YouTube views. However, we know to keep these numbers in perspective, and that they were caused by the over 530 million viewings of our ad on linear TV.

So 2011 is set to be an exciting year for commercial TV. Thinkbox welcomes UKTV to the family, although we say a sad - and hopefully temporary - farewell to Channel 5. A number of UK broadcasters have new management teams who will be putting their plans into action. As well as continued technological advances, there are also major advertising developments afoot, such as addressable TV advertising and the introduction of product placement in UK programming.

Product placement is a small but welcome addition to the TV advertisers’ toolbox. We must all ensure that it attracts new money for original UK production. It won’t help anyone if placement is just money moved from other TV activity. So we hope that no placement agencies or producers will attempt to sell placement by undermining trust in spot advertising, which is the huge engine of British TV production, and where the number of ads seen at normal speed has never been higher.

One hope for 2011 is that people finally stop trying to position the internet and TV as rivals – or even equivalents. The last 12 months saw less of this, but we would like it stamped out entirely in the next.

As more and more people now realise, TV and all forms of internet media are about as complementary as it’s possible to be. Search and social media are helping to prove TV’s effect and the number of online brands who are building businesses via TV keeps growing. Internet technology is delivering TV in new ways, enabling time- and place-shifting which all adds to people’s TV viewing.

The TV landscape is changing dramatically, but this is a good thing. Whatever technology is over the horizon, we are confident that people’s love of TV will remain. Far from threatening TV viewing, almost every new media development is boosting TV advertising’s effectiveness, which is great news for advertisers.

In the UK, TV represents a much smaller share of total advertising than it does in most major markets. Some of this is down to the BBC effect, but I am now not alone in believing that linear TV has every reason to look forward to more years of share growth.