New viewing behaviours and audience targeting strategies for 2023

• VOD embraces appointment TV strategies – Marking a new chapter for the TV and video market, the winners in the platform wars will deploy hybrid strategies balancing VOD and linear content. Broadcasters are adopting aspects of VOD strategy that fit their positioning whilst preserving their points of difference, and VOD platforms are adopting concepts like ‘appointment TV’ and curated content discovery. The market will shift away from all-at-once release strategies and box-set bingeing for new content in order to maximise revenues.
• Ad-supported models answer to inflation worries – US data shows that market penetration for ad-based video-on-demand (AVOD) grew from 20% in Q2 21 to 23% by Q2 22. Kantar’s Media Reactions 2022 study shows consumers are more accepting of advertising, as rising costs are making ad-funded content more palatable. The timing is right to introduce ad-funded tiers to limit price-sensitive churn. However, ad-models risk creating two types of viewers: those with less disposable income who become over-targeted by ads, and those with more disposable income who are more attractive to advertisers, but are harder to reach.
• Contextualise or fail – Marketers must prepare for a post-cookie landscape by experimenting with proxy-based targeting systems and contextual advertising. Targeting within closed ecosystems, in which consented first-party data is available, will still be possible. However, wider cross-platform targeting has hit the barrier of consumer privacy. There will be incremental improvement in the coming years, but the hyper-targeted ecosystem the internet once promised looks increasingly unviable and initial assumptions about the granularity of targeting outside closed ecosystems may have to be reappraised.
• Media companies need to respond to advertisers’ (and consumers’) Net Zero ambitions – Reducing the carbon impact of media and advertising to net zero is the business challenge of our time and a greater opportunity. Next year needs to be a year of sustainable innovation – whether that’s brands offering green products and services, media owners offering more energy-efficient services, or agencies rethinking how their planning, buying and production strategies are impacting the climate. For example, Paris-based content strategy agency Media Figaro has launched a partnership with French start-up Vidmizer to reduce the weight of video campaigns in a bid to use less energy. With up to 80% reductions in carbon reported, it’s a good example of how technological partnerships can reduce energy expenditure. 

“We foresee a year full of challenge and opportunity for the media industry. As global price rises impact consumer spend and advertising, campaign planning could be optimised through improved data application, making budgets go further,” said John McCarthy, Strategic Content Director for the Media Division at Kantar.

“From post-cookie solutions to better campaign planning, data is our fuel – but its usage is changing. The future will continue to deliver a host of new technologies, each brimming with potential. It’s important not to get lost in the hype”.