Television has come a long way from being the 'idiot box' in the corner of the room. Once aesthetically unappealing and lacking processing power, it has evolved into a dynamic, data-driven ecosystem of streaming and gaming.
The penetration of smart TVs in the UK has risen exponentially in the past decade from 11% in 2014 to 74% in 2023. Samsung is the leading global smart TV brand with 60m TVs in Europe and 9m in the UK.
“This is about the smart application of data,” said Andy Jones, head of UK sales at Samsung Ads during a roundtable discussion at Media 360. “We’ve got every device hooked up to the internet, we have data flow and the question then is how we utilise it in the best way. We can prove ourselves as a cost-effective reach investment – that's what we’re striving for. We’re not 100% of the market but our insights can add value to a media plan – we can get very addressable and deterministic.”
Linear and broadcast video-on-demand (BVOD) covers only 50% of the TV market and Samsung’s aim is to “fill in the gaps” with data sets that are location-specific and can map audience behaviour in a meaningful, detailed way. “Our relevance is providing genuine and actionable insight,” added Jones.
The usage journey: dive deeper
Dom Dwight, strategy and innovation director at Taylors of Harrogate, acknowledged that, “Most brands will not want to have 16 different conversations so we’ll be looking to aggregators for a summary – usage is so key.”
For Samuel Hunt, senior media manager at Lloyds Banking Group, geo data would be useful for insights into exposure of Lloyds linear TV campaigns. This could be used to identify areas of the country where Lloyds was successful in reaching their audience and where they need to put more focus. “A big part of our business right now is helping streaming apps to promote content. An ad on a Samsung TV home screen has real strength because it will recommend content to download and apps to use. We effectively become a search engine. This is vital for broadcasters because fewer people are watching live linear so you’ve got to reach me the moment I turn on the TV. You’ve got to expand the reach.”
Georgina Bramall, marketing strategy director for mobile network GiffGaff, added: “It's a massive opportunity for brands because you can unlock a whole new audience, using your contextual approach as well.”
The gaming’s afoot
Console-free gaming on smart TVs is another huge opportunity for brands. “Gaming is massive for us,” said Jones. “Back in the day, TVs were big dumb devices without much processing power and you had a load of buffering. But chipsets in TVs are much more advanced and we’ve created a Gaming Hub, which is a pure gameplay environment where you do not need a console. All you do is sync your controller via bluetooth and log in.”
Automatic content recognition (ACR) allows Samsung to know what games are being played and, by watermarking certain stages of the game, which stages and levels gamers have reached. Ads can then be served at appropriate times.
How geo data can help brands
Timur Cetin, Samsung Ads’ product marketing lead, kicked off a discussion about the value of geo data and it seems that every brand wants to know where their audience – or potential audience – lives.
Dan Geneen, head of marketing at the British Heart Foundation, explained that a large portion of the charity’s income comes from legacies so geo-targeting is useful for the obvious reason that some areas of the country are more affluent than others.
For Samuel Hunt, senior media manager of Lloyds Banking Group, it’s useful to know areas of the country where Lloyds was successful and didn’t need to focus on so much.
Bramall had a similar attitude, saying: “Where we would use it, particularly in a marketing context, would be around signal strength, which is relevant for both broadband and for mobiles. If we had a network outage in a certain area, we might choose to turn off advertising there. Having that granularity is really interesting.”
Hyperlocality was on the lips of others. Muhammad Azka, client director UK at the clothing marketplace Vinted, explained: “Vinted is a hyperlocal network so geo data geo is one of the key criteria for the way we target audiences. We rely on cities or areas with a high user base because people love to ship Vinted parcels in a small mobility network.”
Caroline Manning, head of communications design at Initiative Mediabrands UK, spoke from the agency perspective, using the example of the outdoor clothing brand, Canada Goose. “They’re quite a small, luxury brand without much store presence outside North America,” she explained, “so, it does become quite geo specific – in the UK it’s all about London, France is Paris.”
Measurement was top of Dwight’s mind. “We know that if we line up our above-the-line with promotions in store then both things are way more effective together than alone. If we were also able to partner up with a store and look at particular targeted areas where we’ve run the ad, and there was a way to measure it that would potentially also get the retailer excited.”
Jones concluded: “We have IP address tags for every TV so we know the location and unlike a mobile device, it’s not moving!”