The Thinkbox Blog

There wasn’t a great deal of fuss made last week when the Advertising Association revealed the official UK ad revenue figures for 2012. It was quite a quiet revolution. But I think there should have been more fuss made. So here’s some I should have made earlier.

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‘It’s good to talk’, Bob Hoskins used to say in TV ads for BT. Well, if it was good then, it’s bloody marvellous now. We have probably never ‘talked’ more in the widest sense of the word. As technology has expanded, so have our means to talk. So the chatter on pillows, at bars, and over watercoolers that we always did has been supplemented by the chatter we now commit to the internet or via the ‘phones that are rarely more than a thumb’s reach away. Our day-to-day tête-à-têtes and heart-to-hearts don’t have to be conducted eye-to-eye or face-to-face anymore (although at least 90% of brand conversations take place offline).

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In the ‘80s film ‘Groundhog Day’, Bill Murray wakes each day to discover that he is trapped in time and place, doomed to relive the same events over and over again. Love and understanding save him in the end.

I am reminded of this because TV suffers from its own form of Groundhog Day; every so often something happens which leads to headlines about a revolution in TV viewing or the end of TV as we know it or farewell to the schedule. Often the word ‘death’ is unleashed like a rabid, half-witted groundhog – even now, when the death of TV died so long ago. Read more »

Almost exactly a year ago, Netflix boss Reed Hastings joined many a failed prognosticator before him and predicted the end for ‘traditional TV’. Consumer behaviour was supposed to inevitably change thanks in part to his company and its on-demand wares. Who needs linear when you’ve got on-demand?

Well, it turns out pretty much everyone.

As we pointed out a year ago, he was aiming at the wrong target. We said that it wouldn’t be linear TV that the likes of Netflix could ‘disrupt’ but more likely competitor on-demand subscription services like Lovefilm and the DVD rental industry. Read more »

Last week I attended a stat-packed presentation by Oliver & Ohlbaum on the future of TV. As it is Christmas and a time for giving generously, here are some of those stats, gift-wrapped and placed beneath the Christmas tree of advertising knowledge.

Before I stat you up I, I’ll point out that, as usual, the O&O event was a fantastic use of time, full of genuine, impartial insight, and I would urge you to clamour to get to their future events.

O&O were full of cheer for the future of TV – and not only in the UK, but globally too. They highlighted TV’s ‘robust’ position within the display advertising market and predicted ‘slow but steady growth’ for TV ad revenues (their forecast went as far as 2017). This is fair enough and Thinkbox will be announcing the figures for UK commercial TV revenue in 2012 early next year. They’ll have to go some to improve on 2011’s record-breaking high of £4.3 billion – and some forecasts predict a small drop from the record high – but we’ll have to wait and see. Let’s not count our chickens before we carve our turkeys. Read more »

What do 94% of this week’s IPA Effectiveness Awards winners have in common – apart from having shaken hands with Gyles Brandreth and being utterly brilliant at advertising? The answer is TV, but then you probably guessed that.

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As of right now, TV is totally digital in the UK. In fact, it couldn’t be more digital if it shacked up with Will.i.am on Silicon Roundabout and started talking fluent Javascript. It is that digital.

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I seem to receive an awful lot of emails like the one below, which I thought I’d share with you. Don’t get me wrong, I love social media and at Thinkbox we bang on about what good news it is for TV and we use it a lot ourselves, but I really am reaching the end of my tether about perpetual, unsolicited, meaningless ‘facts’ being emailed to me… Read more »

For me, the end of summer is ‘Edinburgh’. Or, to give it its full name, the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival. Or, to give it its harder to pronounce abbreviation, MGEITF. Think I’ll stick to Edinburgh.

Traditionally Edinburgh is held over the August bank holiday. It is one of the most brilliantly useful, fun and inspiring events of the working year, and a reason why returning from holiday is not too much of a chore for me. This year they even moved it largely out of the weekend and into the working week. How thoughtful. Read more »

It’s interesting how people can experience the same thing but see it very differently.  This is particularly true of Cannes where the glare from the white corporate hospitality tents on the beach is blinding (I assume that it was this blindness that caused people to seem disoriented and stagger up and down La Croisette).

However, a bit like the wonderful Solar annual report which was only visible in bright sunlight (and won the Design Grand Prix at Cannes), my personal viewfinder is extremely sensitive and will reveal the true TV story no matter how determinedly it may have been obscured.

And so it happened that, when I surveyed the Grand Prix winners this year, a story about TV revealed itself.  Fancy that. Read more »