Broadcast video-on-demand viewing soars viewing soars

A record 2.9 billion minutes of TV and movies were watched on the nation’s broadcast video-on-demand platforms last month.

Broadcast VOD executives Pippa Leary of Nine, Kim Portrate of Think TV, James Bayes of Seven, Nev Hasan of MCN and Liz Baldwin of Ten at the Future TV Advertising Forum in Sydney. Picture: Britta Campion

A record 2.9 billion minutes of television shows and movies were watched across Australia’s five broadcast video-on-demand platforms last month, driven by the consumers ferocious appetite for content at their finger tips.

Demand for reality and drama shows across the BVOD market — which is made-up of the nation’s commercial free-to-air TV broadcasters Seven, Nine and Ten, public broadcasters ABC and SBS and pay-TV operator Foxtel — was up 43 per cent from 2 billion minutes of programs consumed in February 2018.

The number of minutes watched “on demand” jumped 44 per cent last month from a year earlier, and the minutes watched for live shows was up 41 per cent.

Nine’s hit reality dating show Married at First Sight on 9Now was the biggest driver of the record performance across the BVOD market in February.

ThinkTV chief executive Kim Portrate said the smorgasbord of “quality content” on BVOD was a big driver as well as high-speed broadband, smart phones and the increasing number of smart-TVs in the home.

“What you see with BVOD is demonstration that the commercial broadcasters are fully aware of where audiences viewing habits are changing so they’re making their content available on all kinds of platforms and all kinds of devices and that’s largely because we know that consumers want to watch, when they want, what they want on any device they want,” Ms Portrate told The Australian.

Businesses are also starting to become more comfortable advertising on BVOD platforms.

“Last year, 500 new advertisers selected BVOD for the very first time, so I would say that what we’re seeing is positive momentum,” she said.

Ms Portrate said BVOD, a bit like broadcast TV, is more effective than other social video platforms. She cited the group’s recent research that found that brands which advertise on both broadcast TV and BVOD get more than twice the sales impact compared with brands that combine their broadcast TV ads with ads on social video platforms.

Karen Nelson-Field, professor of media innovation at University of Adelaide, who oversaw the research into BVOD, said advertisers were unknowingly diluting the sales impact of their media investment when they combine TV with Facebook and YouTube.

“Advertisers want to put their brand in front of people when they’re engaged, and we know that BVOD and TV deliver better engagement, people are more involved and there’s more attention paid to both what we would call regular TV and new TV, which is BVOD,” Ms Portrate said.

Seven West Media’s network digital sales director James Bayes said BVOD offers “the best of broadcast television with the targeting and address ability of digital”.

“Seven was the first to launch true addressable TV at scale during the Rugby League World cup in October 2017. Since then we’re delivered addressable for hundreds of clients through numerous major events including the Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games, and every day since,” Mr Bayes said.

Mr Bayes said video was currently driving the overall growth in the digital advertising landscape, and BVOD was what’s driving video.

“There is no other mature advertising category in Australia that is growing at the pace of BVOD,” he said.

BVOD was growing rapidly through every channel, desktop and mobile, but connected TV “is absolutely exploding”, he said.

Two popular shows on Seven’s BVOD platform, 7Plus, are US medical show The Resident and US comedy series God Friended Me.

Nev Hasan, director of advanced advertising at Multi Channel Network, said as consumer viewing habits continued to change, it was no surprise that BVOD viewing was “reaching record heights across the whole TV category”.

“Especially for the Foxtel platform, where we’ve focused on making sure 1000s of hours of our content is accessible across all devices. Back catalogues of premium dramas like Game of Thrones to local lifestyle favourites like Love it or List it, makes TV viewing even more attractive, and with new measurement tools linking linear and BVOD results, we can show the power that premium broadcast screens can deliver for brands,” Mr Hasan said.

MCN represents the ad interests of Foxtel and Fox Sports, which is majority-owned by News Corp, publisher of The Australian.

Pippa Leary, director of sales strategy and product commercialisation at Nine, said BVOD brings together the best of TV including full-screen, unskippable ads, sound on, no clutter, and the best of digital in terms of the ability targeting and measurement.

“For us we’ve also been able to experiment with audiences in the BVOD space. For example, Love Island last year saw millennial audiences flock to Nine on both linear TV/BVOD.

“The audience was about evenly split and the lesson there was the power of an audience first approach — give viewers the choice to watch where they want and when they want,” Ms Leary said.

Mr Leary said Married at First Sight’s growth in BVOD has been “phenomenal”. “We are at a point where the digital audience is around 20 per cent, and setting new growth records in the Australian BVOD space.”

Liz Baldwin, general manager of digital at Ten, said TV networks had done a fantastic job building BVOD services so audiences had a choice about when, where and how they wanted to watch content they love.

“We’re seeing the trend to watch content on these platforms continuing to increase, particularly with our under 50s audience,” she said.

In 2018, CBS-owned Ten’s BVOD platform, 10 Play, experienced record views, thanks to reality dating show like Bachelor in Paradise and Australian drama series Playing For Keeps, she said.

“For advertisers, having the ability to extend their brands with these shows on a platform that, like linear TV, is 100 per cent brand safe and where audiences go to seek content, is invaluable.”