Addressable TV advertising is the future of television commercials. It combines the typical mass audience of TV with the targeted advertising we primarily know from social media. An interesting cross-pollination that aims to make TV hot and accessible for advertisers again, allowing you to win over a large and relevant audience.
Saturday night. On the sofa with the family and a bag of chips, the dog at your feet. Ready for the blockbuster playing on VTM tonight. At the neighbors’, the program is exactly the same—except for the dog, because they don’t have a pet. The other difference? During the commercial breaks, you see a TV spot for dog food. And they don’t.
Meet addressable TV advertising, the supplement to classic TV commercials that makes personalizing television advertising possible.
Addressable TV advertising has been around for a while. Since 2016 in Belgium, to be precise. It is a response to the growing popularity of digital advertising—at the expense of TV commercials—where you can target very specifically based on age, location, family situation… and yes, even pets. With addressable TV advertising, you combine the power of television with the targeting capabilities of digital media.
Currently, SBS Belgium and DPG Media offer this advertising technology. We are talking about the channels VIER, VIJF, ZES, VTM, VTM2, VTM3, VTM4, CAZ2, and VTM Kids.
From now on, you no longer choose a specific moment for your TV spot to be shown in all living rooms in Flanders, but rather a target group. Your target group is defined based on consumer data and data from your set-top box, among other things. Subsequently, your spot is shown to your target audience at the moment they are sitting in front of the TV. For some people in your target group, that is at 9 PM; for others, it’s 7 AM.
Extra feature: do you have your own customer lists or specific databases? You can cross-reference that database with the databases of Telenet and Proximus to create the most specific target group possible.
This innovation is revolutionary and makes television more relevant than ever. Through collaborations with Telenet and Proximus, the potential reach of addressable TV advertising today is approximately three out of four households in Flanders. That’s no small feat.
These audience-based advertising messages are perfectly integrated into existing commercial breaks. The viewer experiences no difference at all.
Launching a new product, increasing your brand awareness, or driving more sales?
Nothing is really real unless it happens on television, a certain Daniel J. Boorstin once said. Not that we entirely agree, but you get our point. There are definitely advantages.
As a smaller, local player, national television suddenly comes within reach. Your commercial shines among large multinationals or national companies, but based on demographic data, it is only shown in the area where you are active.
In addition, addressable TV advertising removes one of the disadvantages of television: the high chance of waste from people who do not belong to your target group at all. You specify in advance which and how many people you want to reach, and so it shall be.
Interesting? Absolutely. Any catches? Not necessarily, but there are a few things you should consider.
Firstly, TV advertising is expensive. It always has been. Addressable TV advertising does have adjusted prices that—compared to classic TV advertising—are more accessible. But that doesn’t change the fact that you will certainly have to shell out several thousand euros for advertising on TV.
Secondly, you have no control over what people do during commercial breaks. Our set-top boxes are (thankfully) not equipped with a camera. On the other hand, you could argue that people also scroll incredibly fast on their smartphones and only stop when something triggers them. With your TV spot, you are essentially trying to do the same thing.
Include television in your channel mix and don’t view it as that one, chosen medium. Combine it with high-performance digital advertising, content marketing, and/or print ads, and aim for maximum reach with matching results.
After a thorough rebranding, Marchetta wanted to increase their brand awareness. We created a TV spot for them that we showed very specifically via addressable TV advertising to 30- to 45-year-olds in Limburg—an audience of 33,830 individuals. With this campaign, we reached a total of no less than 72% of the target group for Marchetta, resulting in 160,323 impressions.