![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://bollspel.com/linear-tv-the-irreversible-shift-in-television-viewing/&media=https://bollspel.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/13412-linear-tv-the-irreversible-shift-in-television-viewing.png&description="Discover how linear TV is undergoing an irreversible shift in television viewing habits and what this means for the future of traditional broadcasting. Stay ahead of the curve with our in-depth analysis."){kind=link}
This article is part of a series exploring trends in marketing, media, and media buying for 2024. More from the series →
Ad spending is bouncing back, but TV advertising isn’t sharing the spotlight.
Despite broadcasters’ efforts to revamp and embrace new technology, their attempts seem to be falling short. TV ad spending in the third quarter made that all too clear.
Warner Bros, Discovery, Comcast, Fox, Paramount — all these big players experienced significant dips in ad spending. Even the media powerhouse Disney felt the pinch, watching its traditional TV ad revenue dwindle due to fewer ads and viewership.
And no, these drops weren’t just a blip in a wobbly ad market. Indicators actually point in the opposite direction. Giants like Google, Amazon, Meta, and Pinterest showed robust growth in ad spending over the summer. Analysts including Brian Wieser forecasted a 5% surge in U.S. ad spending this year, and publishers are upbeat about the growth trajectory. Plus, job numbers are up, inflation is cooling down, and consumer spending remains strong.
The fact that the TV ad market didn’t exactly thrive amid all this positivity will be a real worry for broadcasters. Yes, they might still score big during the holiday season, but there’s a deeper issue at play here. The largest advertisers nowadays aren’t the traditional TV giants anymore. Rather, it’s the likes of Amazon and Google — and they prefer to splurge on digital ads. And even if they did want to give TV ads a shot, the rising costs thanks to inflation are making them think twice.
“When I started planning AV campaigns they were focused on linear TV, and you might tack on some video on demand depending on the audience and the ambition of the client,” said George MacKean, an account director at independent media agency Bountiful Cow and a former TV planner. “Over time that’s shifted. For some clients with young-ish audiences, linear TV just isn’t cost-efficient anymore.”
Maybe this would be easier for broadcasters to handle if the largest TV advertisers were still pouring money into TV. However, that’s not the case. They’ve been shifting their advertising dollars away from TV for various reasons for years now.
“If anything, this situation is going to get worse for the broadcasters,” said MacKean. “While the ad-supported tiers from Netflix and Disney+ have had modest take up, both companies are going to further incentivize people to move onto that tier.”
As brutal as this reality check may be, it’s hardly a shocker for most TV execs. They could see this day coming, but few expected the impact to be this swift and severe. Otherwise, they would have been better prepared. Their ventures into connected TV, AVOD, ad-funded, and ad-free streaming, et al., aren’t exactly raking in the cash they hoped for.
In some cases, these strategic shifts are actually gnawing away at their traditional TV audiences,