Technology, consumer usage generates new opportunities in TV, radio

Jan Isenbart, outgoing president, egta

“Beyond the incomparable reach and safety they provide to brands, new research proves their efficiency on sales and image. After two years of growth under the presidency of Jan Isenbart, egta now brings together more than 140 members from 40 countries. In a worldwide and digital competition landscape, egta will now enhance its role of bringing the members together and contribute to build new narrative and share new tools and research. Our goal: more cooperation, more egta, to serve our members’ business.”

The message is clear: as audiences adapt the ways they watch and listen and advertisers evolve their own strategies for communicating with consumers, television and radio broadcasters – and the sales houses that represent them – are stepping up to the plate and delivering real change.

Thought leaders and decision-makers from the broadcast advertising industry talked about change: the implications of change, how to adapt to a changing environment and the big ideas that will drive positive change. Powerful storytelling, smart coopetition and effective communication will unlock growth for all.

Key messages delivered by industry leaders from across Europe and the Americas over the two-day event included:

• Television broadcasters need to move beyond placing the viewer at the centre of their offer; now they must also start building user- and fan-centric communities and adapt their strategies accordingly in order to meet users’ expectations, which may be considered as a new currency.
  
• Television and radio broadcasters have an unparalleled understanding of their audiences, and they are masters of storytelling. These are unique assets that brands can leverage as they themselves seek to grow.
  
• The success of media campaigns must be re-evaluated: performance is critical, rather than pure audience considerations. To allow brands to tell their stories in a cross-channel environment, media owners have to be prepared to merge data sets.
  
• Broadcasters across the board should avoid the risk of focussing on – and falling in love with – their own products; their customers’ problems must lie at the heart of everything they do.
  
• Smart cooperation – with the right partners – is key to winning the battle for attention and advertising revenues: coopetition-based business models offer opportunities to buttress against powerful global competitors.
  
• Care needs to be taken in finding and using optimal vocabulary to express a medium’s strengths. Television is a proven, rather than a traditional, medium; broadcasters make television, not content; and advertising delivered to an audience just outside of a brand’s age and demo target is a bonus, not wastage.
  
• The radio industry has to join forces and cooperate much more around the following priorities: introduce up-to-date automated and programmatic buying tools; develop radio’s digital offer faster; and attract new people with new competences to bring their ideas, know-how and insight into the radio business.

“In these ‘post-factual’ times, TV and radio continue to deliver brand-safe quality programmes on a daily basis to mass audiences, measured transparently by joint industry committees and with a proven track record of payback on marketing investments,” added Isenbart, outgoing president, egta and chief research officer, AS&S (Germany).

“Both digital challenges and opportunities are abundant, but they also seem to come for the price of unprecedented in transparency and ballyhoo. Thus, our industry is in danger of decoupling data from facts, consumers from their true beliefs and behaviour, and efficiency from effectiveness. With our incoming President, egta will continue to cut through this underwood and speak with a strong voice for radio and TV sales houses in Europe and beyond.”