Can premium survive and thrive?

Speaker 0 · 0:01

Hello. Welcome to the Media Unfiltered podcast. We apologize for being off air last week. I was on holiday with travel schedules. We couldn't quite record one. But now I'm in Sydney, Australia on the eve of the Future TV Advertising Forum. Forum. And tomorrow, I'm going to be hosting a panel on premium. What is premium inventory? Why does it matter? And does it give advertisers better results? Now prior to my panel, which will include three advertisers, private breakfast briefing, we have some slides to go through where we have a lot of data and analysis on what exactly premium is. And we thought Ian and I thought we'd try something new for this podcast. We'd go through some of the data points and some of the discussions, and we'll discuss what is premium, and we'll also share these slides as part of the podcast. I'll try and involve I'll try and incorporate them within the video to see if it works. Could be great. Could be terrible, but we'll give it a go, won't we, Ian?

Speaker 1 · 0:59

We certainly will. We'll see where see how it sort of, goes. And as you say, I mean, look. There's gonna be some interesting sort of information that comes out from this. So so let's give it a try.

Speaker 0 · 1:11

And they're they're they're fantastic slides and data points, and we we wanna share them as well. We wanna we want to, with this pod, is not just have these discussions, have debate points because some of the things that Ian and I just we don't quite agree on is good to have different viewpoints on it, but we also wanna share with you the data. So we'll make these slides downloadable for you guys to take. So the premise is, can premium inventory survive in a world with unlimited impressions? Okay? So when we when we look at this, we're trying to define what premium is. Is it in the eye of the beholder? Is it only professionally produced content, or is it the environment that the ad sits in? Is it transparent? Is it regulated? Is it trusted? Does that make it premium? Or, Ian, is it a blend of all those things those three things? What do you think?

Speaker 1 · 2:00

Well, I think it I mean, look. I'm coming from a slightly different angle from sort of, yourself for many in the industry. Yeah. I think the the first thing is maybe the right question to ask at the beginning is to say, what is the point of premium? And what we mean by that is to say, well, premium is the means to an end. It's not an end in itself. Yeah. And the whole thing about premium here is what it's supposed to do is actually drive, let's call it, better quality audiences that mean that you get more bang for your buck when it comes to either subscription revenues or it comes to advertising revenues. So the question sort of if we look at it from that standpoint and say, you know, from that environment, what is premium? To an advertiser, you know, an advertiser will look at it and say, content that would deliver, you know, in terms of audiences, yeah, and also as well the impact on advertising, significantly above the average in terms of of the normal sort of programming would be treated as premium. From their standpoint, that is sort of content that delivers sort of, more bang for the buck. Now does that necessarily mean that it needs to be TV content? Not necessarily. You know, from the advertiser standpoint, what they're really concerned about is actually as a cent getting the maximum return from their investment. And so I think what's happened with this stuff, it and it you can see it in a whole YouTube is TV debate that we talked about before. But where people are becoming fixated on it is sort of this description of is YouTube TV. Yeah. And talking about the actual content side. The content is, let's call it a secondary issue. The real key issue here is, you know, particularly for those platforms that rely on on advertising as their primary source of revenues. Does premium content deliver an audience that therefore will give advertisers a greater return on their investment than other platforms would do. And from an advertiser standpoint, that's likely to be the way they look at what's premium and what's not. And as I say, it doesn't necessarily mean it's gotta be, you know, the premium content that we think about in terms of what's on TV. If a YouTube channel, for example, delivers, you know, greater bang for the buck and actually delivers greater conversion for an advertiser. An advertiser may look at it and say, we're better putting our money on on that platform. So I think it really depends on where we stand sort of it in the debate. I come back to a point that I've made number of times before. Advertisers only have a limited pot of money. Yeah. There is not an unlimited pot of money out there to spend on ads. Therefore, what they are looking for is the greatest return on their buck. And, yeah, this is why I think sort of it's important to think of the premium question in this sort of environment. From an advertiser standpoint, what they're looking for is content that actually delivers above the norm.

Speaker 0 · 4:59

I think with this, we're gonna focus a lot more on the environment rather than the type of content. You know, this whole is in the eye of the beholder. I think it's one of the greatest lines from the sort of digital and social side, you know, because if someone is watching something, it is therefore premium because they've chosen to watch it, when really it's the environment. Do you know a human is watching it? Is it a trusted environment? Is it transparent? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So we're gonna look at the impacts of environment, over actually how the content is produced itself and see whether that has a greater impact for advertisers, as you say. So why are we having this conversation now? Well, it's obvious. Around the world, supply is up. It's as simple as that. And for television and for AV, budgets are flat. Right? So everyone's off to share. So what do you do? You look at your product, and you obviously wanna charge a higher price in order to maintain or grow your share or claim that your inventory is worth more than with other stuff, which I totally get because not all inventory sources, in my view, are the same. But that's the that's the landscape we're in. I got a couple of slides here that show The UK over the last fifteen years, the the disruption and the things that have occurred. For Australia, we did, 2015 to 2025. That's a nice slide, and it shows it's quite interesting. That 60% of, viewing time in 2015 was scheduled TV channels. What a wonderful time that was to be a marketer. You knew pretty much when the audiences, were gonna be there. They were healthy, probably linear audiences too. So concurrent viewing. Now when you fast forward to 2025, that that figures down to 20%, and you have a huge amount of fragmentation. Okay. We know all this, don't we? This is what's caused this problem, Isn't it, Ian? The the fact that audience are all over the place. Anything to add to on those slides?

Speaker 1 · 6:51

Yeah. I mean, I I'd make a couple of points on that. I mean, first of all, if you look at what's here driving this debate, you've really got two camps. Yeah. I I'm with you. My view is not all content is equal, and that pretty much has been the basis for the broadcasting industry. You could argue for pretty much the whole of the traditional media industry since its inception, but not anyone can produce the sort of quality content an audience is really like. And so and even if you can get mass reach, you know, because, you know, there there's plenty of sort of low quality content. There's also get larger audiences as well. The actual quality of the content does matter both for advertisers and for for audiences. And that's as I say, that's how the traditional media industry has really been built up. On the other hand, what you have is essentially, let's call it the the tech platforms that very much are are proponents of the view that it doesn't really matter what you watch. You know, it could be AI slop. It could be sort of of it could be six second videos. It could be long form content. It's essentially saying that all audiences are equal. So what you've got here, almost two ideological camps. You've got on the one hand the traditional media industry that says, well, hold on a minute. You know, premium still still very much has a place in terms of the in terms of the content. You've got an attack platforms on the other hand. You turn around and say, the whole idea of premium is dead. Now bear in mind that both sides are actually, you know, there is a large degree of self interest for both sides. With the broadcasting industry, of course, by being able to say that we produce premium content, what's it mean? Well, it means that essentially your share of advertising budgets should probably be higher than your share of audience share because, okay, you have a certain audience share, but the actual programs you are showing are of a higher quality. And therefore, you can make a case for saying that you can keep a higher share of advertising budgets. On the other hand, the tech platforms, they have a very big vested interest in turning around and saying, well, actually, your share of advertising should equal your share of audience because for them, you know, the the whole idea of producing premium content and particularly for a market like broadcasting where tastes are still particularly in markets like Europe, Europe, sort of Australia, large parts of Latin America and so forth where content is still very much nation based, where you've essentially got to produce content for local markets. Yeah. This whole idea of saying essentially that, you know, certain types of content are actually more valuable, It just destroys the tech platform's economic models or at the very least what it means is that that big pot of TV advertising money is gonna be very difficult for them to penetrate when it comes to advertisers. So what you really have here sort of, on this whole debate, and this is why sort of made the point at the beginning about premium can mean different different things to different people, is premium in itself is not actually the most important question here. You know, what it is, it's a proxy. It's a proxy war for essentially what is the fight over advertising revenues. And that's really sort of the ultimate sort of issue that's sort of, lie lies here. Advertisers have, go back to the point before, they have a limited pot of money. They've got allocated in certain ways. They do not know at the moment. They are still living in this sort of transition period where many decision makers are very used to that TV environment you described. Yeah. Sort of schedule TV having 60% of the audience. They still think of TV having their a premium place, which I think is absolutely right. But, of course, they're also looking at some of the other data stats that are coming out. And so what you've got here is advertisers at the moment pretty much sort of sitting on the fence to say, well, does streaming really count or not? Is it really got the same sort of importance for our business that it did ten to fifteen years ago? And for the advertisers, they're uncertain. They don't really know what the answer is. And this is why I think this sort of struggle over premium is actually so important because, as I say, it's not so much the definition of premium that's important, but it's whichever side actually comes out victorious in this this in this debate will be the side that essentially sort of wins when it comes to advertising budgets. And so this is why this fight is so important.

Speaker 0 · 11:23

It is so important, but I'm doing a bit of work to the New Zealand market after after staying in Australia. I'm going straight there. Linear rates there are at times the same as YouTube rates. Just wanna digest that for a moment. And and we know in The UK, they are getting to that point too. So whether advertisers are valuing all the tenants that make TV in those markets premium and putting a price on it, I'm not sure they are. So let's you mentioned it. Let's talk about AI slot. Why I include this in the slide? Just to interrupt. Can I come back on something on that, though? I mean, do bear in mind that that what you've also got here as well is

Speaker 1 · 11:59

that is true in terms of linear pricing. But for many of these broadcasters, what they're also seeing as well is they're just seeing substantial growth in their digital services and also as well that their management teams have made promises to investors that while linear is the decline, the digital will offset the will offset those declines over time. The point I'm trying to make here is that, yes, linear CPT rates, in many cases, going down to to the level of YouTube, that's not necessarily the case for digital CPT rates, which actually is still That way high. By and large remaining elevated. You know, the the and again, there's a question here is the management for their for their messaging to investors. If you're a broadcaster, you know, a pound of linear revenue or or let's call it a percentage of linear TV growth or or whatever is not necessarily the same as the percentage of digital TV growth. You'll get sort of more rewarded by the financial markets for showing faster growth in digital than you will by showing a, let's call it, more stable linear performance.

Speaker 0 · 13:00

What broadcasters are doing here, they're robbing Peter to pay Paul. They're jacking up BVOD in order to offset declines of linear and undervaluing linear. The whole market's undervaluing it as a result. I don't think they should be doing that. I think they should be selling it together with audiences. And some some broadcasters are starting to do that, but they need to blend it because this won't last. It's a short term fix to try and deal with that delta. As you mentioned, the declines in linear and the growth in digital. So I don't believe that's the greatest long term strategy. I think in the end, broadcasters will move to sell, audiences and just blend it. If it's linear, great. If it's digital, great. It doesn't matter. Absolutely. What's coming You are what you price. Sorry. Go on. Ex you are what you price. That is I think that's important. And we undervalue linear in every single market. It's utterly crazy. So what's coming next is more inventory. Right? So I I've got a slide here which looks at AI Slop. Horrible name, isn't it? It's really odd. So, accordingly, I have to use a Guardian analysis and a couple of different companies who've done studies on it. Well, but the problem is you know, these platforms operate non transparently, so it's hard to actually know. So they're from these studies. Right? But what they saw was one in five YouTube videos, is AI slot, but this is not just on on YouTube. This is a problem on other platforms. The channels rack up millions of views. And despite these platforms' efforts to curb what they class as inauthentic content, some of these channels, 10% of YouTube's fastest channels are AI slop. But you know what? Maybe it's good AI. Maybe it's good content. I'm not saying it it could all it's all it's all crap. Maybe some of it's good. But these recommendation engines are recommending them. They're coming to the forefront of the, of your UI. And they're free to upload, and these platforms are making money from them. Should we be should we be concerned about a AI slop? Maybe it's good content. Maybe it's good inventory.

Speaker 1 · 14:57

Well, it depend you know, shouldn't be concerned. It depends where where you sit in the sort of in the equation. I think, generally, yes, we should be concerned. I mean, you know, again, you could argue if audiences like it, what's it really matter? Well, at the end of the day, what will happen is that if premium content is pushed out of the market, eventually, it will die. If the, yeah, if the commercial logic of it just doesn't work, and then we're left in the world where, quite frankly, you know, all you do have is artificially generate slop. And and the let's call it the sort of discipline that maybe would have been there when there was competition to produce good AI slop goes away. So I think it's certainly something that we we want to be aware of. But I think here is sort of really where the economics of this are actually quite quite interesting. Because bear in mind, all things have been equal, if you are a tech platform, if it in fact, you could argue any platform, you know, the broadcasters, theoretically, it could also apply to them as well. Realistically, it is more profitable to have sort of of your audiences watching AI slot than it is watching premium content because you don't have to pay away you you don't have to pay away a slice of money or at least sort of as large a slice of money to third parties. So there is naturally an incentive on the part of these platforms to push AI flop to their audiences. Not because of a, part because it it's again, you reduce the cost that you have to pay out. Also as well look. Again, it comes back to this point that we're talking about before that really what you've got is an ideological sort of sort of fight as it were over how advertising money is allocated. And, again, this is what it really boils down to. So we could talk about audiences. We could talk about sort of the quality of content. But realistically, the driving force for the this is the economics. It's really about how advertising money is disputed between various platforms. And if you are sort of of the tech platforms, because you're pushing this message message of saying, look, it doesn't really matter what these people watch. Essentially, what we need is if they're watching, let's say, YouTube, 15% of all TV viewing is on YouTube, then we should get 15% sort of of all TV ad budgets. Yeah. And the argument goes, doesn't really matter whether they're watching premium content or watching slop or whatever. It's just that your advertising money should equal your audience share. And so what you've got here is that, you know, the thing with Slop is you'll never get Slop that is AI always produces the average. It never produces sort of anything that is brilliant. But the fact is, it's actually if you can get sort of people watching Slop sort of for various, for two minutes a day and just build that up over time, two minutes a day times an audience of several billion. That adds up to a lot of audience time over the space of the year. That's a lot of time you can go back to advertisers and say, look. You know, people are watching this content. You should give us more of the advertising money. And so I think that you've got several questions here as to whether we should be concerned about AI stop. There's obviously a sort of regulation in the government standpoint. It's a societal standpoint. There's what we think is individual consumers. So that of the quality of content that we actually want. But realistically, what I think is, you know, what my concern is is that, essentially, what will happen is we'll get to a place where advertisers just say, yeah, it doesn't really matter what sort of content there is. You know, if audiences are watching slot, then that's fine. That's where we'll put our money. And, you know, if that's the case, yeah, then you've got the then it is very likely that AI slot will win.

Speaker 0 · 18:52

I think we have to move on from slot because I can't hear that word anymore, but we we are concerned about it. Maybe there's a middle ground here for premium providers to actually have some good slop and add that to their inventory list, perhaps. Let's look at transparency. Does transparency mean that your product is premium? So if you are counting it in a transparent and open way via jigs and mogs and the rest of it, does that make it premium? You and I are we're we're we're very public about this. We think it does. We think it does matter, but I'm just gonna speed through this. I believe that perhaps clients don't care as much as we do. I think it's really, really important to know who's advertising on your network, what they're doing around what content, and where your ad appears. But when you look at it, again, it's something that we go on a lot a lot about it. We've got a slide here that was displayed last year at ASI and at Future TV. We know that more and more industry spend is going into environments that isn't measured transparently. And then ITV, the lovely Samir, sent us, a a lovely slide here that how it looks on TV, that less and less inventory will be traded via Barb. They'll be moving into outcomes and trading on that basis, etcetera, etcetera. So we'll be quick on this. Here's the question. If you're an advertiser and you're working towards outcomes, does transparency matter? Does it make the pro does the make does it make the environment that you're advertising in premium if we're counting the impressions accurately and openly? Yes or no?

Speaker 1 · 20:30

Yes. I'm gonna say yes, but. And the the but is that I don't think necessarily the broadcasting industry has helped itself. Yeah. And what do I mean by that? What the tech platform is very good at, even if, you know, we would dispute some of the information that comes across or or at least we we would question some of the ways in which it's been portrayed is, you know, platforms such as YouTube and and Meta are very good at sort of explaining to CFOs and boards why they should spend on these platforms and how sort of spending online sort of will help their businesses. Now, you you know, we can argue about the data. We can argue whether that's real or not, but the language in which they speak and the way in which they sort of target the decision makers is very effective. I think for a long time, what's happened with broadcasting is that broadcasting, because it has been a premium product, because, essentially, it has for many, many years has been the only game in town, have maybe sort of have got a bit slabbing in terms of how it explains to advertisers. So exactly are the direct business benefits that come from actually advertising on TV. Now don't get me wrong. There is you know, and again, you will know far more than than I will. There is some fantastic work that is being done. I mean, if I look, for example, what Lindsay Clay is doing in terms of Thinkbox, you know, their team also as well, the likes of Kate Walters Bolt's ITV. You know, and Samir, you know, they are very much sort of trying to sort of link in the benefits of advertising with direct business implications. But quite frankly, I think a lot of the TV industry is still very much behind the game here. And until that, essentially, the the broadcasting industry starts to realize that being premium is not good enough, and it goes back to what I said at the beginning. From an advertiser standpoint, what they want to know is advertising is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. The end is to actually grow their sales and grow their profits. So what advertising what any sort of platform showing advertising has to prove is that essentially in terms of that investment, it will drive a business outcome. And I think what's happened sort of with broadcasting is broadcasting for many, many years, you know, is certainly over the past decade or so has been a lot slower than the online platforms to make that case. That is now changing, and that is good, but there's still a long way to go.

Speaker 0 · 23:05

I think the most important thing you said there for the TV companies listening is to understand that being premium is not enough. We can argue that you are premium, but it is not enough in today in today's world where where data and proving your worth within these frameworks, within outcomes, is so important that, actually, the product itself is not enough on its own. I think that was that was the most important thing you said. And we have to understand that these models from the platforms that can tie these sort of outcomes to spend and and prove it in that way, they are very good. We have to accept that. The platforms are very, very good at doing that, and TV definitely needs to catch up. When we've done a I've done a couple of studies with, a few TV companies around the world, and it TV has a massive halo effect into digital outcomes. It just doesn't measure it. It's underreported by about 30 to 40% of its impact, and it just needs to show that. It needs to demonstrate that. And, and I think, like you said, the team at ITV are really leading the way with that. And there are lots of them. There's lots of outcome based solutions around the world that that will help the TV community

Speaker 1 · 24:11

catch up. We're gonna move on, though. Okay? The next one. Actually, just before we we do, though, just just on that. And that that very much is is true, and that's, you know, in terms of the halo effect that it has online. Look, advertisers are not charities. Okay? You know, again, you know, and the world is not fair. So to say that the broadcasters, as it were, deserve a a seat at the table, Yes. You know, definitely in terms of the content they produce, it's premium content. And also as well that it, you know, for we both agree that essentially in terms of the quality of the audience engagement you will get will be much higher. However, that needs to be demonstrated. And also as well, you know, they need for an industry I've said this before about the advertising industry in general. For an industry that is built on persuading it persuading consumers to buy a product. It is absolutely awful when it comes to actually persuading what is this ultimate sort of buyer, which is management boards, of the quality of its product. And it's sort of of link into outcomes, and that has to improve.

Speaker 0 · 25:24

It does. Okay. We're gonna move on to attention. So a lot of TV companies are, particularly long form premium are saying, we drive greater attention to our to our media. Right? And Karen Nelson Field came out in, 2016, one of my events, actually, and, launched, you know, this research that that demonstrate that if your ad is seen by humans on a big screen and you could hear it and seen for longer, you get greater outcomes. Fantastic. 2022, she came out with a piece in Cannes to say that 85% of all digital ads fail to reach the attention threshold. The attention threshold is two point five two point five seconds, and you you need to get beyond that. If you wanna grow your brand, you need to hit that threshold. Moving on to today or up to 2015, the field with Lumen came out with some research, but, actually, ad investment, despite this research around attention, ad investment has actually shifted away from high attention over the last decade to low attention. And you're looking at when you're at the 2025, you're looking at, 7030. This is my favorite slide last year. Share of spend versus low attention and high attention. So with that in mind, Ian, we know the facts. We know high attention delivers better results. We know the medium that that the ad is in drives the attention. Right? It has a major, major impact on it. So but advertisers are voting with their wallets. Again, aren't they? They're investing more and more in low attention media. So does attention greater attention make your product more premium?

Speaker 1 · 26:57

Well, look. It does. But the problem here is not the product itself. It's essentially locked in the traditional media industry is losing the argument. And, again, go back to I mean, we we can pull out as many studies as you as we want sort of on this. And the advertising industry will say, well, look. This actually proves, you know, a point. The problem is is that the industry is losing the debate in where it really matters. The only place that it really matters, and that that's the boardroom. At the end of the day, this is a capital allocation issue. You have a certain amount of money. Companies only have a limited amount of money they can spend. They have a certain amount of money that is allocated to advertising, and then they take a view of where that money should actually go. Most sort of CEOs and CFOs are not experts in this sort of minutiae of what goes on in the advertising market. They do not take sort of full attention of all the twists and turns and all the various studies that are produced. What they want ultimately boils down to one question. World sort of advertising actually deliver in terms of our product. Unlike anything, where essentially the five of the product is uncertain, where they would generally go with or who they will generally go with is the more persuasive salesperson. And at the moment, the more persuasive salesperson are the online platforms.

Speaker 0 · 28:18

Yeah. We we yeah. Yeah. We we yeah. I I know. We we we we're well aware of that. However, that's why they have media specialists. That's why they have marketing specialists to to understand this. But what what we're saying is the research shows that high attention media has a much greater impact on brand, much longer lasting effects. The evidence is there. So the media team should be pushing this to to to boards. But

Speaker 1 · 28:45

does it matter, ultimately? Yes or no? Does does high attention make your product more premium? Yes or no, Ian? Well, yes. It does. But but just to come back to this point, I mean, you know, look at The Wall Street Journal, and this is actually flip side in terms of something that has actually benefited the broadcasting industry. The Wall Street Journal was reporting only a few weeks ago that, essentially, YouTube is struggling to to gain control of the TV ad budgets. One of the biggest barriers that it's finding is that CFOs don't believe that YouTube is TV, and therefore, they're unwilling to actually allocate a share of TV advertising budgets to YouTube. Now so to come back to your point before about, yes, you know, firms have marketing specialists and they should be doing their job, etcetera, etcetera. Yes. That's all very, very true. But at the end of the day and this is something that I've seen across firms, large and small, across multiple countries as well. And, yeah, you would be surprised at how common it is. Often, the decision about the allocation of spend does not come down to the marketing team. Often what will happen is that CEOs and CFOs will make a direct intervention and suggest where a certain share of the budget should go. And if you are a CMO, it's very hard to actually turn around and say, you know what? I think you're wrong. We could argue that essentially that's what should be done. And in an ideal world, that's what would happen. But there is no doubt that essentially, sort of there is pressure coming from boards down onto marketing teams to suggest that they should optimize advertising. Advertising is, to come back to this point about, sort of, I've said it many times before, sort of and I mean, you know, that sort of, I teach about how to speak the language of the CFO. Advertising is seen as a cost. Any cost, the automatic assumption will be cost should be minimized. They should be optimized. Mhmm. And they should be made more efficient. In that sort of environment, that will play to the tech company's strengths. What TV has to do, traditional advertisers have to do, is really change that debate.

Speaker 0 · 31:03

K. So Ian Whittaker, mister boardroom guy, doesn't like attention, but that's fine because he doesn't speak the language of the boardroom. Does trust speak the language of the boardroom? Now Peter Field with the IPA have done a ton of research on this because over the last fifteen, twenty years, trust has come up there as as a major impact on effectiveness of whether your brand has greater effectiveness with its branding, with its advertising, with its success. Right? And that is that's come up in the in the world of social and fragmentation, all the rest of it. And this isn't like advertising. This is actually brand trust. However, what Peter argues is that the environment that you advertise in, if it's more trusted, the the environment rubs off to your brand. So he had some charts that come out showing trusted effects are influences influenced by media choices. And then Kreedos, very recently, I think this was at the IPA event, like, about three weeks ago. They they've got twenty, twenty five datasets. I've skipped through to that one. Looking at trust in advertising, television, radio, cinema, again, heavily regulated environments, high in trust, low in trust, influence social media online. And what's really interesting with this research is that for 16 to 34 year olds, trust remains in those regulated categories, still really high, and low in the, online influencer, again, the the unregulated environments. So, Ian, I know you're gonna talk about boardrooms and CFOs. Maybe maybe avoid that for this one now because I see I think we've got your point there. But trust, does that make your product premium?

Speaker 1 · 32:42

Does it make it a premium? It has to. Yeah. Simple as that. You know? Again It has it has effect on effectiveness. It actually

Speaker 0 · 32:54

Peter has, done research. It showed that the the the the platform rubs off to your brand and impacts effectiveness. So it's gotta be, surely. The because otherwise, like, why would advertisers pay for all this regulation and, you know, ads verified by humans? Could you imagine some of the shit that goes on online that happens to TV? There'd be all sorts of issues. But, you know, if it didn't, then why do it?

Speaker 1 · 33:22

Well, yes. No. No. No. No. That that, that's perhaps been true. I mean, look. I mean, just because we're gonna I mean, this is a a common sentiment. I think just all become far more important in this sort of environment. I think so too. Yeah. And having said that, the simple fact is that not all consumers act the same. And the fact that you can still get so many products with, you know, that quite frankly have a low trust that still are, you know, are still very much generating sales and, and so forth. I think it I I think it's slightly more complicated than than saying, yeah, having a simple

Speaker 0 · 34:07

trust is what counts. I always go back and think about the sort of a, the price comparison. The tenants, though. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that's the only thing. It's just one of the tenants that make premium is trust. It's not it's not all of the things. It's it's it's the the entire environment, and and trust is one of them. That's the point. Look. If trust actually leads into to consumers actually buy more products,

Speaker 1 · 34:28

then yes. You know, if you have two products on the shelf and the consumer goes, you know what? Actually, I will buy that. One of the reasons why I will buy x over y is because I trust that product more, then definitely Trust has a place and is important in in premium.

Speaker 0 · 34:47

Okay. Next area. Big, big area because we've had the IRB in Sweden act on it. So we've had announcements from The UK. Scams, building on this narrative of trust. How does your brand look next to scam ads? Is if you the environment that you're advertising in contains scam ads? Like, privately, I was with a bank yesterday, and they were saying that their CEO has AI images of him selling banking services and crypto and stuff that appears on Meta, would you believe? And, you know, it's it's a problem for them. As you know, with Meta, they, came out in the Wall Street, Wall Street Journal and PwC report. They make a shitload of money on scam ads. They were on stage. They didn't deny it. So yes, no. If scams exist within your environment, does that make it premium or not, and does it matter? You gotta be quick on this one. Ian, it does matter. These people are getting these are people are are scamming real humans are getting scammed out of real money. Like, it should matter to the industry. Don't you think? Or are you trying to trying to say that, well, if these platforms are delivering for brands, it doesn't matter. Surely, this stuff matters.

Speaker 1 · 36:01

Again, depends to sort of it depends which angle you're looking from. I mean, I agree from a sort of I agree. It does matter. I think it does matter. I think it's important. But the reason why I'm hesitating is because for some advertisers, there you may be again, advertising is a means to an end. The end is to actually grow sales. That you may be if we opt to if our key aim is optimization and we don't see any impact on ourselves from advertising sort of on these sort of next to these ads, does it really matter? Now Mhmm. I personally think it does because I think over time what happens is, we seepage into your brand. However, I can see how the attitude of it doesn't really matter. Why that would take hold.

Speaker 0 · 36:54

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. So the next area, I'm gonna finish off with one last question for you. This is gonna be your favorite question. I know you're an absolute expert on agencies. But just before we get there, go look at AdTech. Does a sprawling ad tech ecosystem support premium? We're not gonna do questions on this, but got a great slide here on the Australian landscape. I've I've done a ton of research into this particular area around, programmatic and and TV. No. A sprawling ad tech ecosystem does not support premium. There's too many hands in the till. We did the same, graph, if you like, for, the the Canadian industry. And in the middle, about 80% was being lost. And no one here can argue that the companies in the middle with the hands in the till were deriving 8080% of value out of the pot. So the app marketer was putting money in, and the publisher doesn't get enough money out out of the other end. I'm not saying that there's all bad companies and all involved in all that. It's just that there's there's just too many, so it needs to be cleaned up. Final final point here is agency deals. So I've got a lovely elephant here, which shows that the elephant in the room. We all know for over the last ten, fifteen years that that procurement have got involved. Clients are demanding more for less from agencies, and agencies are having to respond. As a result, you chase cheaper CPMs. We all know in any industry, you can't get better for less, can you? So you end up getting less good, if you like, for less money. That's just the way it works. So agency deals, do they help the premium industry, Ian, from your perspective?

Speaker 1 · 38:36

Well, again, sort of, just think about why these deals came into place. The agencies make most of their money. The big hold cost made most of their money from media buying a planet. Most of their profits, if not their revenues. Now the simple fact is is that's a scale business. And if you get anything that's sort of scale, typically, what that means is you but you're making a model that's built on efficiency. So by its very nature, it's not really that concerned with premium. So the and therefore, sort of, to to give us sort of a sort of come around to your question again. Yes. It does impact, I think. But quite frankly, I think the agencies have put themselves in a position where they are seen as suppliers and the product that they provide is seen as a as I said, it seems the cost and therefore something that doesn't necessarily have that much value. That's why they're dealing with procurement. And you deal with procurement when essentially you are essentially seen as a supplier of something that is not particularly valuable. Doesn't happen in all firms. You know, I've heard tales of boards been heavily invested in marketing campaigns, and that's great. But, generally, of the way the industry has been pushing itself for the past twenty, twenty five years, it's been pushing itself as a commodity, and therefore, it's been priced as such.

Speaker 0 · 40:04

And that's a great way to end it. I mean, this debate could go on for ages. Ultimately, I honestly think and you and I have had discussions about this. This will be part of another podcast, but diversification for anyone in the pure ads game. If you're a broadcaster and rely on all your invent all your money from advertising, I think, Ian, not to speak on your behalf, but I will speak on your behalf. We believe that you need to diversify. You can't win alone in advertising today. I think there will be a harmonization anyway of the impression. You just with all this extra supply, you just I just don't see premium really standing up and holding its value. However, there are some green shoots. Right? There's the big events like the Super Bowl. Like, they went from 8,000,000 an ad to 10,000,000. Right? It's a huge price hike, isn't it, in a year, and they sold out in record time. So maybe I'm wrong, but I do feel as though that, that these companies will have to look for other means of revenues and, like I said, to diversify outside away from pure just TV ad sales if the vast majority of their income relies on it. Ian, this has been, a great chat. I'll share the slides once again. This is not investment advice, is it?

Speaker 1 · 41:15

Here's your time, that's an advice. Bye, everyone.

Speaker 0 · 41:18

Take care.