The credits are not ready to roll just yet. In fact, by staking out its unique value and by tweaking the way it sells advertising, television could yet retain its historic leading edge amongst marketers.
That is what the Swedish TV network TV4 has done, and TV4 sales director Malin Häger claims the company is reaping the benefits.
“TV is super hot at the moment in Sweden,” she says in this video interview with Beet.TV. “It feels really strange.
“We were appointed the best media – before Google, Facebook, all the others. We were really shocked, but we were seen as the most modern media at the time, so we’re happy.”
Earlier, TV4’s COO Mathias Berg had told Future of TV Advertising Forum: “2017 will be our highest turnover and will deliver the highest profit margin, and one of the main reasons is digital.”
Bonnier-owned TV4 launched in 1990 and has public service obligations including a network of local stations.
The outfit offers VOD via TV4Play and ad-free stream via C More.
This year, Telia, TV4 Group, Discovery Networks and Modern Times Group (MTG) teamed up to offer dynamic ad insertion on Telia’s platform. In fact, Telia was courting TV4 for an acquisition – another example of a global telco looking to buy in to media and content.
How has Häger managed to improve ad fortunes whilst many broadcasters suffer?
“We had difficulties to explain for the young people in the agencies the price differences between the video content and TV,” she says. “So, last year, we put it in new target, which is three plus.
“It was more meant to be like a comparison to the digital players, but it ended up that the agency liked it, it was so comfortable and it was very easy for them to buy it.
So we sell quite a lot of it and this year we take away all the limits of 54, so we sell 25 plus all through. So we have taken almost all target groups away because that’s … we want to sort of state that TV is at it’s best when you buy them all. It’s a mass product than mass media.”
This interview was conducted at the EGTA New York meetings hosted by Viacom. EGTA, the Brussels-based trade association of international television companies, is the sponsor of this Beet.TV series. For more videos, please visit this page.
