By Head of Broadcast Gregor Chalmers
When I was asked to write about the state of TV in 2024, I felt that it had much in common with the England men’s football team from the recent Euros: often much maligned and talked down yet in an unprecedented period of success and with the scope for even more in the years to come.
As a fully fledged member of the Tartan Army, I’m the last person to heap praise on Harry Kane and co (and I promise this article won’t be all football chat) but despite losing to Spain in the recent Euros final it capped a period of unprecedented and sustained success for England: two finals, a semi-final and a quarter final in the last eight years. You’d think that would mean a happy and contented fanbase but in reality, an alien who pitched up in London in early July would have reasonable assumed England had been about as successful as Scotland over the last decade.
So where does TV come in? I started my media career in 2010 as a TV buyer and back then the “death of TV” was very much in vogue as the big bad wolf of digital came for those juicy advertising budgets. Somehow TV and I have made it to 2024 and despite rumours of its demise being exaggerated you can still find people claiming that TV is on the way out.
The truth couldn’t be more different, especially if you accept one simple premise: TV as it was in 2010 doesn’t really exist anymore. “TV”, if we define it as viewing that takes place on the main (aka the biggest) screen in the home couldn’t be in better health and will actually thrive in the coming years. Hopefully the same is true for me.
According to the latest edition of Media Nations from Ofcom, broadcast TV still has a weekly adult reach of 75%. And it’s not a fleeting glimpse either: the average time spent watching TV and video content at home in 2023 was 4 hours and 31 minutes per day, a 2% rise since 2022. Perhaps most interestingly of all is what we saw for YouTube: the TV screen accounted for 34% of the platform’s viewing inside UK homes in 2023, up from 29% in 2022. So, what we are seeing that despite the fragmentation and proliferation in the video market, largely driven by streaming platforms, the battleground for attention is still taking place on the biggest screen in the home.
TV didn’t die with the dawn of the streaming age; it evolved and continues to adapt into a thriving ecosystem where everyone from viewers to advertisers to the broadcasters and streaming platforms are best served. As viewers we’ve never had so much choice at our fingertips, which is why overall video consumption has remained remarkably stable over the years. With such a plethora of premium and engrossing content to watch, much of it in traditional broadcaster spaces but also now in ad-supported streaming tiers, there’s an unrivalled opportunity for brands to speak to consumers in new and engaging ways.
This is why TV continues to be such an effective channel for brands at every stage of their journey, from launch through to market domination. ‘Profit Ability 2’, a Thinkbox study from earlier this year, found that for every £1 spent on linear TV the full payback was £5.94: that’s compared to an all-media payback of £4.11.
There are lots of underlying reasons for why TV has been and remains so effective for advertisers but one of the most powerful is its ability to demand higher levels of attention and thus recall. Whether it’s live sports or the latest gossip from the villa we love to come together in front of the TV screen and this emotional investment carries on after we stop watching. In the ‘Context Effects’ research, TV screens were found to drive 60% higher ad recall than tablets or smartphones.
At the time of writing, the Olympics have just taken place, offering yet another amazing spectacle on our TV screens. The rest of the year had been packed with great content to enjoy. Channel 4 had also brought us the Paralympics, along with the nation’s favourites, Great British Bake Off and Gogglebox. We’ll be back in the jungle with I’m A Celebrity on ITV, or if high-production drama is more your thing watch out for The Day of the Jackal on Sky Atlantic.
The best TV plans in H2, 2025 and beyond will be the ones that have looked across the entire video ecosystem and made data-driven, audience first choices. It’s increasingly important to avoid binary choices: think more about “linear and…” than “linear or…”. The exciting developments on the screen are being matched by those off it: there is such a wealth of data in both the targeting and the measurement capabilities that mean there has never been a better time for brands, regardless of budget size, to grow their business through TV advertising.