Broadcast, linear, BVOD, SVOD – viewers don’t care. It’s Total TV that counts.

There’s a lot of talk about linear TV being in trouble, but are we missing the point? How many New Zealanders even know what linear TV is? Is it TV broadcast through an aerial from a transmitter on the hill, via satellite, or is it just an app on their TV?

Ask any research agency how they measure advertising exposure, and they’ll tell you—it’s becoming harder to get an accurate picture of where people see their TV ads.

If viewers don’t really see the difference, then why does the industry treat them so differently?

Let’s talk about ‘Total TV’—the combination of broadcast linear TV and BVOD (Broadcaster Video On Demand). While they aren’t identical products, their combined performance tells a different story.

Total TV is watched for an average of 207 minutes per day. If we multiply that viewing time by the daily reach, you can see that TV is actually 35% bigger than global video-sharing platforms and 39% bigger than SVOD. Total TV builds reach as well as other platforms, but it holds viewers for a lot longer.

So, Why All the Negativity?

To make matters worse, Amazon Prime has announced it will be joining Neon in having an ad-supported subscription tier available at some point before the end of 2025, which will further fragment an already fragmented market. It’s only a matter of time before the other global SVOD services follow suit.

That’s the bad news. If we look at TV as just an offline broadcast service, then the negativity is well-placed. However, that is not what TV is anymore. TV, or Total TV, is an evolving hybrid of broadcasting and streaming services with a stronger ability than anything else to build the one thing advertisers want: reach.

There are other reasons to be optimistic too. E TV is proven as the most effective ad channel. Ebiquity’s “Profit Ability 2” study from the UK involved a meta-analysis of econometric studies from 141 brands. It underlined that linear TV and BVOD combined were the most effective channels at driving ROI. Combined, they delivered an ROI of £5.61:£1.00—much higher than £3.20 on paid social, £3.86 on online video, or £2.78 on out-of-home.

TV Networks Will Do Advertising Better Than SVOD Platforms

Advertising is not the #1 revenue driver for subscription video providers. Although Netflix’s ad revenues are a closely guarded secret, analysts estimate it at about $1bn globally, which equates to just 10% of total revenue.

For TV networks, however, advertising is their bread and butter, and they do it well. The small scale of the NZ market can facilitate technology innovations that can turbocharge TV. For example:

• Automated contextual targeting: Using AI to scan content for specific targeting opportunities. For instance, a cooking fail in a show may cue up a Delivereasy ad.
• Data overlays: Using clean rooms and advertisers' own first-party data to optimize content against current customers.
• Retail media data: TV can eat into retail media revenues by forming data partnerships with major retail media players to enhance targeting capabilities.
• AI ad production: Lowering barriers to TV production will not only make TV available to a new tier of advertisers, but enhanced data capabilities will allow for geo-targeting.

What Needs to Happen Next?

As advertisers, we need to evolve our planning and reporting to be Total TV.

On the buy side, we need a trading model that allows both broadcast and digital TV to be planned and bought together. On the sell side, Planet V3 from ITV is a great example of a platform that has evolved to trade multi-platform.

But to facilitate cross-platform trading, we first need unified measurement—a system that not only covers the components of Total TV but one that can also encompass platforms like YouTube and SVOD audiences too.