Research Notes

Commercial Television Broadcasters will need to offer new services to their advertisers

or face the consequences of loosing them.
Advertising revenue has been declining on almost all media-platforms, as advertisers cut back on budgets and scramble in their search for the ever more fragmenting consumers.

While television still is a very powerful marketing tool, the ratings for television are being slowly affected by the younger generations take-up of the Internet and game-boxes and advertisers are already looking at how to target their audiences as Internet advertising looses it’s momentum.

For the commercial television broadcasters, one of the few new revenue sources lies in the mobile services sector. And with the right strategy, broadcasters could be offering new services and platforms for their advertisers as well, giving the advertisers the target groups they are having trouble finding and at the same time, generating new revenue that compensates for the decline in ratings and traditional advertising on TV.

Commercial broadcasters could easily become key players for the mobile operators as well. The mobile Operators will need massive marketing, backed with entertaining and innovative services, to promote their 2.5G and 3G platforms and entice mobile customers to buy new mobile terminals that support the new networks and services. But rather than just running advertisements on TV, if the broadcaster offered the mobile operators to become part of say a new TV format, running an exciting interactive element using new mobile technology as the return channel, that would be something that the mobile operators would find attractive.

Mobile operators and advertisers cannot develop new TV formats like “Who wants to be a millionaire” themselves. That is not their business. On the other hand, commercial TV broadcasters need to spend some time on positioning themselves with the right mobile strategy, if they want to be major players and help expand the mobile services market.

Our estimates, based on the value and growth of today’s European market for mobile services, show that the following sectors will benefit the most from the expanding market:

1.Television
2.Publishing – weekly magazines
3.Daily tabloids
4.Radio
5.Newspapers
6.Household circulars
7.Outdoor advertising

Television has the opportunity to be top of the list, but only if the broadcasters and mobile operators approach each other with an understanding of each others business cases and a will and strategy on how to do business together.

Unlike the Internet, all the business, revenue and billing models are in place in the mobile sector and the consumers have always paid for usage and content. Strand Consult believes that those broadcaster who have a well defined mobile strategy will be the most attractive partners for mobile operators and have the opportunity to offer advertisers new platforms in targeting consumers.

Through consulting and workshops, Strand Consult has already helped one broadcaster attain the position of preferred partner in their countries major mobile operators. Other national broadcasters that we currently are working with have recently been rejected by mobile operators when they approached them without a clearly defined and strong mobile proposition.
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