Streaming’s Beachfront Property, The Home Screen, Draws Interest From Advertisers
19.06.2024 - 23:47
/ deadline.com
S. Charles Lee, the architect of hundreds of ornate Art Deco movie theaters, had a famous saying about his goal of engaging audiences before they settled into their seats: “The show starts on the sidewalk.”
A century later, streaming services are taking a similar tack, leveraging their new place in the American living room by welcoming viewers with home screen advertising. As they anticipate the start of their streaming programming, viewers are generally considered by marketers to be more open to ad messages. Early purveyors of home-screen ads include several platforms invested in free, ad-supported streaming, among them Roku, Vizio and Amazon Fire TV. And as ads become a more crucial part of the strategies of top subscription players, they are also starting to pop up in some of those formerly brand-free settings.
For both viewers and advertisers, “There’s nothing better to put on your home screen than video when you’re coming to watch video,” said Sweta Patel, VP of marketing and merchandising, in an interview.
Home screen ads were a prominent theme at the NewFronts earlier this spring and have been on the menu this week at the Cannes Lions marketing confab. It is not a discrete category in any reporting of ad revenue, but the premium rates it is said to command add to the overall momentum of the streaming ad business.
In a report this spring, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said total digital video advertising spend, including connected TV, social video, and online video (OLV), is projected to grow 16% in 2024. That’s nearly 80% faster than total media overall. In the last four years, the share of ad spend has shifted by nearly 20 percentage points from linear TV to digital video, which is now 52% of the total