What is the definition of “television” as propagated by Thinkbox?

Television, TV and telly are the default words that people use for professionally made, immersive, audio-visual content – whether viewed on a TV set, on a mobile or on a computer screen.

It’s best to try and avoid confusing TV with ‘video’, which consumers tend to use when they mean either amateur, user generated audio-visual content or chunks of very short-form audio-visual content (like a music video).

What are the challenges facing commercial television in marketing itself to maintain its share of advertising revenues?

A part of our task is overcoming prejudice – and its effects – from internet fundamentalists; a now shrinking minority that doesn’t want to believe the facts about TV and has been shouting its misleading views from the rooftops.

Our mission overall is helping advertisers understand current TV and how it is changing. We prove to them that TV is in great shape despite what they may have heard. People are often shocked when we show them basic facts about the remarkably robust health of TV. With so much distracting background noise coming from some nearby rooftops, they are surprised to hear facts showing consistent viewing patterns for 10 years, the highest number of commercial impacts ever and young people’s undiminished love for watching and talking about TV.

Why is scheduling important in a world where viewers are increasingly picking and choosing programming to watch at times more suited to them?

Lots more choice also means lots more work and TV schedules play an important role as trusted content editors for people who want an easier way to navigate through the expanding world of TV.

We’ve seen from people’s DTR behaviour that, even when their Sky+ is overflowing with fantastic timeshifted entertainment, they still generally go to the live broadcast first to see what’s on. If nothing takes their fancy they then go to their planner.

People love watching things at the same time as other people; if everyone’s watching at different times there’s nothing to talk about. Given that TV is the second most talked about thing after friends and family it’s not something they’re likely to give up easily.

Early signs about various web on-demand services show that they are largely used for catch up and the content is viewed very close to the date of airing. The signs are that on-demand is actually boosting broadcast TV. It allows you to catch up with a new series that everyone’s talking about before you’ve missed too much of it.  Then you can carry on watching it in the broadcast stream.

With PVR and associated ad-skipping technology penetration increasing, what are the arguments you can give to advertisers to keep faith with television?

It’s wrong to describe them as ‘ad-skipping’ technologies: it’s not what they were designed to do, just something they can do. It’s much more appropriate to call them choice-enhancing technologies than ad-skipping ones. Also PVRs should really be called DTRs (digital television recorders). It echoes retailers who prefer the DTR moniker as it is so much clearer to customers what it does. A correctly named tin, I guess.

Let’s be very clear: people can very easily avoid ads if they choose to, but they don’t. The fear we etched into our souls when the DTR arrived was utterly misplaced. 87% of the time DTR owners choose to watch live TV (according to the Skyview panel, which gives robust data on actual Sky+ usage). Even when they do timeshift, they still watch 44% of that in real time.

DTRs are in 14% of households now and behaviours have started to settle. Skyview – supported by findings by ACB and the London Business School – also points to another compelling fact: people actually watch more ads when they get a DTR than they did before (6% more).

Which other medium might be a natural ally with television assuming viewers do not devote their whole attention to the TV set when it is on?

TV and internet-based media, like search or email marketing, are very complementary but one of the great things about TV is its ability to amplify the effects of all other media. At Thinkbox we’re big fans of all media and we never denigrate other media. It should never be ‘TV or’, always ‘TV and’.

That said, the message for advertisers is that their campaigns are much more effective with TV at their heart. ‘Marketing in the Era of Accountability’, by Peter Field and Les Binet, an analysis of 880 IPA Effectiveness Awards case studies from the last 27 years, found that campaigns using TV significantly outperform those that have not. It also concluded that TV is becoming more effective over time, more effective now than in the 1980s.  And PricewaterhouseCoopers’ ‘Payback Study’, commissioned by us, rigorously and independently analysed 760 brands in 7 markets and found, pound for pound, TV to deliver the greatest return; £4.5m per £1m spent.

In any case, innovative neuroscience studies have shown – amongst many other insights – that low or partial attention can be a good thing because of the way the brain processes information.