Thinkbox
Money is moving around the modern TV ecosystem as viewing changes. But outdated definitions of TV are doing its evolution a disservice because it’s all genetically TV.
In 2024, Thinkbox announced that Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Vevo, and other streaming services with ad tiers had joined as associate members.
Thinkbox represents commercial TV, so you’d be right to infer that Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Vevo self-identify as TV, and that Thinkbox and its shareholders ITV, Channel 4, Sky, and UKTV think they are TV too.
It’s one big, growing, competitive, but increasingly collaborative TV family; different looks and qualities, the odd squabble, but genetically all TV – professionally commissioned and produced, regulated, pre-vetted, independently measured, audiovisual content.
In 2024, TV advertising returned to growth, up 3.8% to £5.27bn. That figure, having covered only linear and broadcaster on-demand TV adspend for years, for the first time included the investment in those ad tiers on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Vevo – plus other AVOD services.
So: TV, a growing family with growing overall investment.
But a Campaign feature recently asked where the money in TV was moving to — in other words, it’s leaving TV – based on TV’s share of total adspend declining in 2024.
The article largely answered itself: TV money is mainly moving around the TV ecosystem as viewing changes. But it is an odd question to ask when TV advertising grew.
How could it have been a year of both growth and decline?
One issue is basing judgments on share of advertising. We believe that is flawed when overall spend is growing, which it is. We know that the long tail of advertisers is driving the growth. Total ad market expansion inevitably reduces the share of TV and other media that aren’t yet natural homes for the long tail.
Another issue is baked more deeply into the industry’s psyche.
Liberation from linear’s legacy
Our industry is marinated in an assumption that linear TV is “TV”. Ofcom, too, which issues press releases about TV viewing decline, when it means only one part of it. Other bits are growing.
Campaign’s headline on its feature was: “TV: where’s the money moving to?”. But I would argue it was really “Linear TV: where’s the money moving to?” in disguise. Some people reading the headline will have thought exodus, not evolution.
Debated definitions of TV don’t help. You can see Thinkbox’s above. But Bicycle London for example, quoted in Campaign’s piece, defines TV as linear plus BVOD. SVOD and other forms of TV are labelled digital, boosting apparent digital growth, while depressing TV.
The problem is Thinkbox’s fault as much as anyone’s. We’ve tried to convince the industry TV isn’t only linear – joining with TV streamers, publishing a single TV advertising figure composed of all forms of commercial TV. But it hasn’t worked.
Perhaps we’ve spent too much time countering YouTube’s claims to be TV (it isn’t, and that’s OK; it’s a platform that has some TV on it) and not enough time making it clear what TV is.
It’s media spend, not delivery spend
The way adspend is reported adds to the confusion.
In the official AA/Warc adspend figures there’s a category called “TV” as you’d expect, and it includes all TV. It then has a sub-category called “of which VOD”. Fair enough, it’s interesting to know the split – and it highlights the growth area of TV.
But, in a quirk of reporting, that “of which VOD” bit – the growing bit – is also claimed in the online display category, as are the growing digital revenues for newsbrands, magazine brands, and radio.
So, TV and some other media exist in two places at once: grouped together as specific media but then some of it split out based on its delivery.
This overcomplicated double-reporting is unhelpful for anyone seeking clarity about ad spend. It seems sensible to group by media, not delivery. Otherwise the next illogical steps would be grouping advertising delivered by electricity or ink or maybe just words.
It is simple. People shopping online at Tesco and people going to an Extra or an Express are still buying things from Tesco. Equally, people spending less money in Expresses and more in Extras is money moving around the Tesco ecosystem, not leaving it.
If we allow content producing, editorial parts of media to be hijacked into online advertising, we strengthen herding effects already shoveling money into the tech platforms and away from quality (and evidence).
This isn’t just semantics
Shackling TV to its original linear definition means TV’s story is told with one eye closed. Such myopia is misleading. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers is a painting of a vase if you only look at one part of it.
This matters because TV is important. There is a UN World TV Day for a reason. Yes, TV is a ridiculously effective place to advertise, but it is much more important than that. It supports democracy, truth, creativity, makes people’s lives better. Advertising helps make that possible.
If we keep defining TV only by what it was, we undermine it and miss the opportunity of what it has become.
This article was originally published in Campaign.