The worst of ad buying declines is now behind digital marketers, according to a report by WARC. Industry forecasts have predicted a 13% year-​over-​year increase for digital advertising in the second half of 2020, and that includes digital TV advertising.

The Importance of TV Advertising in Digital

Linear TV ad spend may still be declining, but that is only because advertisers are switching their TV ads to over-​the-​top/​connected TV (OTT/​CTV). “Agencies say they expect to increase investment by 46% over the whole of 2020, compared to 2019,” reports WARC. “Brand executives say CTV/​OTT spend will go up by 32%.”

As a result, 41% of the average ad buyer’s budget this year is expected to be put toward TV/​video video buying. “All TV/​video buyers expect 33% of media schedules to be tied to broadcast-​year deals, 36% to calendar deals and 32% scatter,” according to WARC. Ad buyers know that Americans who are stuck at home are bored and are turning to their TVs more than they have recently in order to keep themselves entertained, particularly OTT/​CTV. And that’s where digital TV advertising can earn their return on investment.

WARC also reports that the importance of NewFronts is on the rise for 72% of ad buyers. NewFronts are defined by SteelHouse as, “a series of presentations content publishers (AOL, Google, Yahoo, etc.) put on each year to convince advertisers to buy ad time during their premier digital video experiences. It’s the digital answer to the TV upfront, and it’s essentially designed to make TV buyers comfortable with spending their budgets on non-​TV content.” These digital presentations give ad buyers the option to buy OTT/​CTV TV advertising online.

Is your client hesitant about switching their traditional TV advertising dollars over to OTT/​CTV? Audience data available on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel may be the push they need. For example, did you know that 21.2% of U.S. adults are OTT Streaming Service Advertising Responders? That means that millions of Americans have seen ads on their TV streaming services and were led to take action in the last month. Does your client really want to miss out on that?