Episode 100: TV isn’t going anywhere – it’s going everywhere

00:03  
Intro:  
Welcome to the CIM Marketing podcast. The contents and views expressed by individuals in the CIM Marketing Podcast are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the companies they work for. We hope you enjoy the episode.   

00:16 
Host: 
Hello everybody, and welcome to the CIM Marketing podcast. And today is a very special day, because it is our birthday, and not just any birthday, it is our 100th birthday. This is the 100th episode of the CIM Marketing Podcast, now in its sixth season, and thanks for all your subscriptions on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all your downloads, 10s of 1000s of them in the six years we've been going. And to celebrate we have got with us one of the greatest British brands, a brand that has been doing content long before podcasts existed, long before even the internet existed, and that brand is one that will be known to everyone. It is truly a household name in every sense of the word. And it is ITV, and to join us from that is another birthday boy, Mr. Jason Spencer, who is Business Development Director for ITV, Jason, how are you? 

01:13 
Jason:
I'm very well. It's my birthday, and I couldn't do anything more or want anything more than recording a podcast. So thank you for having me.  

01:21 
Host: 
Oh, it's great to have you on the show. Just a quick intro for Jason, he is in charge of all of ITV’s commercial teams outside London. He's been at ITV for 13 years, and before that, he was agency side in the advertising sector. And he is going to tell us a little bit about where TV is going. Is it going out? Is it coming in? Is it going anywhere? Is it going everywhere? We might get a bit of a clue from a poll that we did this week with our members. Thank you all of you for your responses. We had hundreds of responses. We asked you, how do you predominantly watch television in 2024?  

And the remarkable finding is that only 11% of you predominantly watch TV by what's called a linear broadcast. So broadcast, sitting on the sofa watching something that's going out at that time, i.e. through BBC or ITV or channel four or any of the channels. 56%, more than half, prefer to watch it as a premium streaming service. Jason, that is a mind-blowing statistic, and it's a massive change, isn't it? 

02:27 
Host: 
Massive change. I think if we were doing this five years ago, it would undoubtedly have been very, very different. I'll be honest with you, though Ben, I don't think it's massively different to what I thought it would be, because you've asked this of a group of people who, and I mean this in nicest sense, but probably not representative of the nation at large. People who work in the media, marketing, creative industries are a subset of, and I think if you've been asking me, I probably wouldn't have been a million miles off, we've got this balance that we are striking. And I think the title that we were talking about for today's podcast, TV isn't going anywhere, it's going everywhere – and I think if we think about that and just take a step back for a moment, the definition of what counts as TV has changed immeasurably.  

The very fact that we're calling things such as YouTube on a TV, TV these days, the very fact that we are looking at TV in this really, really diverse way. Now I just want to set these in context, because many of you who works within the TV sector will know there's an organisation called Thinkbox who represent the main TV companies, and they do a survey called admation every couple of years, and it compares the behaviours and attitudes of people in the marketing and media industry with the nation at large. And your survey showed that 11% predominately watch TV through a linear broadcast service,v12% through an ad supported streaming service like and I'm assuming that you mean like an ITVX, 6% through a premium streaming service, like a Netflix, and then 20% through the likes of YouTube. Well, if you look at thinkbox’s latest stats, and these are all independently verified through the likes of BARB, the reality, if you cut this up as a pie chart, is 71% of people's viewing is through linear broadcast. That compares to 11% of your survey. 9% is through broadcaster VOD. You've got 12% there, but overall that's 80% of viewing is through the likes of ITV and ITVX, whereas for the people who filled in the survey, it's 23%. YouTube's 5% and all of subscription bodies 15%. So what that tells us is we are not normal. People who work in the media and marketing industries do not represent the nation at large. I think it's really important to kind of have that sense of our behaviorus don't necessarily reflect the customers that we have. But I would say, you know, we're not in denial here. The world is changing. And viewing is changing. The way we're watching is changing. The competition that we have as ITV has changed immeasurably. That's both a challenge, but it's also a massive opportunity, as we're going to talk about today. And I think it's a great little survey to have done as a bit of a setup of what we're going to cover. So those numbers are great. They don't reflect what the nation’s doing. They don't reflect how brands are building. I think the other thing we'll get into is a little bit around the fact that the likes of Netflix and Amazon are now offering an ad supported tier. So for those who filled in, Netflix or Amazon, have they distinguished there between if they see adverts on there, does that fit into the ad supported streaming service or is it a premium streaming service? I think the definitions are quite an interesting thing. 

05:45 
Host: 
They are interesting. And it sort of speaks to actually the way that ITV as a broadcaster has changed, or as a body, as an entity has changed. I mean, I take your point that the constituency that we surveyed are very media savvy, and marketers that work in advertising agencies and so on and so forth, and are not typical of the consumer. But perhaps they are a flag as to where the market might be going and certainly ITV itself, once a broadcaster, now is also a streamer and the producer. It has sort of a triple hat. It has three different hats. Those outputs, those roles it plays, have changed, and the precedence of them has changed. 

06:27 
Jason: 
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you go back 10, 12, years or so, most of our income came through advertising revenue. Then when chief exec at the time Adam Crozier came in, we diversified through the acquisition of production companies, set up a studios division, and then, more recently, coming out of COVID, we've pivoted into streaming. So we now run ITV and itvx concurrently. But I think it's a really interesting thing. Are we a broadcaster? Are we are streamer, producer? What order do you put those in? We refer to ourselves now as a TV company. And I think if you look at our recent results, you'll see that from the year end results that we had at the end of March, you'll see that just over half of our income came through the studios division. We've got 70 production companies making content, not for ITV, but for UK broadcasters and streamers and internationally, selling shows around the world. But the fastest growing bit, the bit we're really looking to supercharge, is our streaming revenues through itvx, and that's growing at a rate of knots. You are seeing the shift. But we've got to remember that the linear broadcast side, the live viewing experience, it remains incredibly strong and will continue to do so. It's balancing the two that is a very interesting challenge, but the one we've certainly risen to. 

07:47 
Host: 
I was going to say, I mean, we talk about linear broadcasting. I'm showing my age here when I say this, I'm old enough to remember when there were only three channels, never mind only four channels. And that's almost the definition of a captive audience, isn't it, when you've got three channels that people can access, no satellite, no cable, no streaming, no other way of digesting television content than sitting in your living room and watching it on a fixed television set. And when that changed, or it changed rapidly, presumably, it created a massive disruptive challenge for ITV? You know, you've talked about some of the way you've branched out. When you face this massive change in options that the consumer suddenly had, what were the key strategies that you built to remain agile, to stay on top of the tree when you've got all of this competition and all of these new ways of people consuming media?  

08:41 
Jason: 
Yeah there’s two sets of challenges we have in terms of that competition. One is the competition for rivals, and one is the competition for advertising revenue. The two kind of go hand in hand, because advertisers follow audiences to an extent. But those different platforms, those different environments where you can consume content, do very different things. Not all of them are trusted and brand safe and regulated, not all of them offer the versatility for how you can target, how you can reach mass audiences. So I would probably throw the question back at you, and without sounding obtuse, is say which era of change do you want me to talk about? Do you want the era of change that we're now when we're up against the likes of YouTube and TikTok and Facebook? Do you want the area of change when Sky launched? You know, it's an ongoing change. And you could argue that we have challenged ourselves through launching a streaming platform to compete with linear broadcast.  

But if you don't, I think cannibalise is probably too strong a word, but if you don't, kind of almost eat yourself, someone else will eat you. So what we've tried to do is be have put TV into more environments, reach the consumer in the ways they want to be reached, reach those lighter TV audiences. Yes, there's a fragmented way in which people view. But the nation still comes together. We see the likes of live sport – it’s probably the biggest single opportunity to bring the nation together. When we're seeing with this year's Euros, and you take something like the semi-finals for England, and we're getting almost 30 million people watching at the same time. If you're watching on itvx, there's about a 5, 10 second delay. We are keeping up at that time. And remember, most people were watching this on linear broadcast, but I think the amount of terabytes that it took to power the number of people who were watching that England match on itvx alone, which is a very small amount overall, was, I think, about half of the capacity of all internet traffic on that day. And the majority are watching it when it's broadcast. So our job is to make shows that bring the nation together, people want to watch at that time, or that they hear about and then search out. Whether it's a Mr. Bates versus the post office, whether it's Britain's Got Talent, whether it is live sport, that's the big challenge that we face.  

11:01 
Host: 
It's absolutely interesting, isn't it, because there are two dynamics going on here. One is you're saying we want to challenge ourselves and eat ourselves, we'll put new products and new services out there that basically disrupt our own business. But on the other hand, you're saying that the idea that the death of linear TV is has been greatly exaggerated, that actually it's still, by a massive distance the preferred medium to watch television, what you do differently to your competitors to sort of reconcile those two positions, because they would immediately seem to conflict?  

11:33 
Jason: 
From an ITV point of view, it's about investment. We spend over a billion pounds on content every year across ITV and itvx, certainly for the first you know, since we've launched itvx, we had a ring-fenced investment around that. Our investment focuses on both commissioned content, whether that be through ITV Studios or beyond, as well as acquired content, such as sport or content from other production companies. And it's about recognising that everything that we put out, we are searching for the biggest audience possible, right? If we're not driving big audiences, then we're not at the heart of culture, and we're not delivering what advertisers want. Now it is becoming ever more challenging to do that, and the way you drive a big audience is not just about these days, the people who watch it at that time that it's broadcast, it's the combined total TV effect of those watching on linear broadcast and those on ITVX. So if I might give you an example to bring it to life, so I can sort of conceptualise this. I'm sure many of the people listening to this will have seen, at the very least, heard about, but seen Mr. Bates vs. the post office, and seen the impact that had. Now that was broadcast on linear on ITV one on New Year's Day and the three days that followed. So it was four days strict, and across that time, it did about four and a half million viewers watching it at that time. It was actually remarkably consistent across those four nights. Generally, you sometimes see things drop off a little bit, this remained pretty much the same. But the noise that that generated meant that people who hadn't seen it at that time went to search out on ITVX, and across the course of January, a further 10 million people watched it on ITVX. So you've got then the combined effect of those who are watching on linear broadcast, those who missed it on linear broadcast then watching on itvx, and you see this overall effect. Now, drama can be quite different to live sport, the example I gave earlier, but it does show that, from our point of view, having two really strong platforms that work together delivers for us the best of both worlds, delivers that for advertisers, but also importantly, and most importantly, I’d say, delivers it for viewers. 

13:39 
Host: 
So it's greater than the sum of its parts. You think it corrects this sort of holistic effect, this sort of symbiotic effect, if you like, one compliments the other.  

13:49 
Jason: 
Yeah, we list a great archive of content on ITVX but its success is driven off the strength of the linear broadcast schedule. So I would argue going to another side of this, the effect that Mr. Bates versus the post office had on the public consciousness, the anger that it prompted, the petitions, the other sub postmasters coming forward, the Acts of Parliament, the discussion in Parliament, Paula vannel giving back her CBE – would not have been possible if this had been launched solely on a streaming platform. It's by going in an environment where millions of people see this simultaneously, react in that moment. And it's that groundswell and that momentum that you produce, not the trickle over days and weeks, but what you can do that is the power of linear broadcast TV, and I think, would not have happened any other way. So that's just using one show as an example. It shows what linear broadcast can do at its heart, I appreciate that only 11% of the people who are tuning into this see that as the place that they go to, and I'm not disagreeing with the fact that it's becoming ever more difficult. That competition for eyeballs whatever age you might be, however busy you might be, is really difficult. Our job, then, is a marketing one. How do we market ITV, ITV1234,be, as the place to go to to watch content? How do we get the news about those shows across? Because you could argue that every single show that we launch is like a new product launch. So for any marketeers here who have launched products, how do you maximise the success of that? We have a window. It's often 9pm on a Tuesday to do that. We're not just, you know, imagine just selling your product for an hour in a shop. We are trying to maximise the sales at that time, the viewing at that time, and we have to do that through marketing, hence our significant increase in investment in marketing over the last 18 months. 

15:47 
Host: 
It’s interesting, isn't it? The linear TV is the mothership. It's the Big Bang. And your streaming service, to some degree, I'm using a marketing manager, is the follow up, the conversation afterwards, it's the engagement afterwards, both complimenting each other. 

16:01 
Jason: 
Yes and no actually, I think for some things, yes. So the example I gave you there of a drama, absolutely, and for certain genres, we see that strength. And you see, like we said, for live support, you see there's real strength of the linear broadcast schedule. But when you're trying to reach a younger audience, they may not be going to any broadcasters. They might be starting in a streaming platform in a different place. So when you look at shows like love Island, half the viewing now comes through itvx. Once the viewing comes through ITV two. Now, much of that viewing on ITV X is live. We call it simulcast, so people are watching at the time it's broadcast. So I might be slightly delayed because you're kind of watching this episodically night after night. But what ITVX has been brilliant at is bringing in light of viewers. So for all of the marketeers who filled this in, who aren't necessarily going to linear broadcast, I would guess that possibly the way you might come into an ITV world is through itvx. You'll hear about something amazing, go on to that because you're familiar with using streaming platforms, that sort of destination for discovery, finding content there. Many of the great box sets that we have on there, the archived content, is incredibly strong. A lot of the American box sets are incredibly strong, are bringing in younger audiences, keeping them there. And we've got this kind of analogy that we used over the first year of ITVX's launch, and how it sat alongside ITV, which is around bonfires and fireworks.  

We thought about all of the content that we had across ITV and itvx as either being a bonfire or a firework. Now, if you think about that, if you know nothing to do with ITV content or marketing a firework is an instant thing. It shoots by, aims high. It sometimes burns out pretty quickly. But it does a particularly strong job. And they are the pillars in the schedule that drive big audiences at moments in time – live sport, entertainment, those kind of juggernauts across the year. The bonfires are the things that people congregate around, stay around. So you get people in for one episode, and before you know it, you watch three or four series. And the combination of those two things is really powerful. It's not unique to ITV. You look at the strategy on a Netflix or an Amazon, you look at the depth and breadth of their content and where the viewing actually comes, yes, there'll be a success of a new show they've got, but a big chunk of their viewing comes through those archived box sets that they have as well. So it's the balance of those two. It's really important as a framework, how you get people in, how you keep them there. 

18:29 
Host: 
Interesting. You just mentioned a competitor, and one thing I have noticed in recent times is the collaboration, probably not with Amazon, but with other channels. I know you mentioned disruptors if you like, YouTube, and Tiktok and so on and so forth, but other traditional television channels have become to some degree, partners in certain senses, in certain scenarios, haven't they? That seems to be a very odd and unexpected development.  

18:57 
Jason: 
I think so. I think probably for if, depending on the sexes and categories that those listening to this sit in, I think the idea of you collaborating with your competition sometimes might feel a strange concept. We call them frenemies. I'll use a quote here. I might pepper this with a couple of quotes as we go through this podcast, but there's a great quote that we sometimes use, which is, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go further, go together. It's a great quote, and we partner, in many instances, on data, on ad tech, on research, and most recently, actually, on a great industry initiative called lantern, on outcomes as well, with Channel Four and sky. For those familiar with the TV sector, we have thinkbox, which is the body for TV, funded by the broadcasters. And most recently, there's affiliate partners who've come in, in Amazon, Disney and Netflix to be part of this, to be pushing great premium content across the UK in those advertising environments.  

And these initiatives are about making it easy for advertisers and agencies to plan and buy and to be able to interrogate the impact of. So sea flight, for instance, is an initiative around measurement of the de duplicated reach of linear and VOD that you can look at across the entire industry, across ITV, Channel Four and sky. We already have the kind of gold standard bar, but this enables you to look at how linear and VOD come together, and how that has evolved over time as VOD viewing has grown, video on demand viewing has grown. We've got from our side, we've got a self-serve platform called Planet V, which is the ability to plan and buy and optimise your campaigns on ITVX, similar to how some of the people listening to this might be using a Facebook or a YouTube, self-service platform, you have full control. You can now not only do that with ITV within this platform, but also STV and sky. On a data side, we work with infosum, who are a data privacy company. They work with about 20 different premium publishers, including us and channel four, so the ability to use that and have a common currency around first party data, really, really key. And lantern, most recently, which we launched 11th of September, is a great initiative to look at measuring outcomes joining together all the great work that ITV, Channel Four, and Sky have been doing in isolation to create a common currency. We're in a proof-of-concept stage to look at how we can measure the effect that advertising on TV has on some of those online metrics, site visits and search and so on and so forth. So by working together, we are championing TV. We are aware that there are a lot of digital providers who either already do that and mark their own homework within those kind of wall gardens, or are much bigger than us. But we believe that we can be better together, working together in this way and go further in partnership. 

21:50 
Host: 
You’re collaborating as a paradigm against a different paradigm. So the idea of television versus the TikTok’s, social media and so on and so forth. You've got to prove the case for television again, when you've got disruptive technologies coming in and claiming they're better, and, as you say, marking their own homework. 

22:06 
Jason: 
Totally. What we do compete with the likes of Channel 4 and Sky on is content. You know, we're competing for eyeballs. We ultimately then compete for advertising revenue. But what we have to remember is it's really important, both as a public service broadcaster, as ITV is, but as someone offering great publisher content for us to champion this and to make sure it's as strong as can be. We're in a year where there have been a number of elections around the world, and the ability to be able to balance what's right from wrong, what's true and what's not true, in order to make decisions has never been more important. The ability to do that in a very regulated, trustworthy space such as television is hugely important. We hold ourselves to a higher standard. We are regulated, that's held to a higher standard than even you know, if you look at a documentary that might run on TV versus a documentary they might run on a premium video platform, they are very different thresholds. The level of compliance to be able to get through, to get Mr. Bates versus the post office, to even run as a drama and be able to say this is based on true story, is an incredibly high threshold. And it simply isn't the case that on platforms you have that same threshold in terms of integrity.  

23:22 
Host: 
I think people will be surprised by that. That's an important truth, isn't it, that you have a much higher regulatory barrier to cross than many of your competitors. Not just the social medias, which we know are largely unregulated, but actually non televisual streaming services. You've got to comply with much tougher standards in order to get your stuff out there.  

23:43 
Jason: 
Remember, at the end of the day, the likes of ITV is free to air, right? The way we look at it is, you know, you pay, for those who are listening to this, you pay to access premium streaming services. You pay maybe 5, 10, pounds a month, and you're in an ad free environment. You watch some adverts on ITV both linear broadcast and video on demand platform, and there's a value exchange. You watch some ads which are trusted and regulated, they've run through ClearCast, they are truthful and honest, and you have free access to all of this amazing content, over a billion pounds of content. So that's the very simple way that our business is set up. I think the really interesting development as well, which we've kind of not touched on yet, and you see, as streaming develops more and more, is the ability to offer addressability at scale. In a cookieless world, the ability for us to have first party data, be able to run targeted advertising, be able to offer that to advertisers has never been more important. It's the fastest growing part of our business in terms of viewing, but also in terms of advertising revenue, and we're now sitting on over 40 million registered users. That first party data, again, with integrity, working with our data privacy partners, infosum and every single campaign that runs on ITVX through planet V our self serve platform, has data baked into it so it's relevantly targeted. So that's a really important development in terms of what we're able to offer, how we're able to offer it, and the ease of access. 

25:12 
Host: 
So that's technology transforming the heart of your commercial strategy, right there. 

25:17 
Jason: 
It's technology enabling it. But I think it's also going into the very first place again, for any marketeers who are running databases and building databases, going in with a strategy, how do I build my first-party data with the permissions to be able to use that for marketing purposes in some way? Not all businesses set themselves up in that way from the go, and if you don't it's very difficult to get back to that space. We're now over 40 million registered users, and the ability to leverage that, now for those 40 million, about 22 million are coming into the platform every single month. We call them monthly active users. For us, again, think about the frequency of purchase, frequency use for any given product in a category. That's the most important thing. If we can narrow the gap from that 22 to that 40 million, people coming in month after month, we are diversifying the audience, creating the right content for them, making it stickier, offering more to advertisers, and then we can scale it accordingly. 

26:17 
Ad Break: 
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26:28 
Host: 
Are advertisers your main customers? Would you consider them your main customers? Or do you consider viewers your main customers, or shareholders or somebody else? 

26:36 
Jason: 
I think, well, listen, you're asking me as the person who runs our commercial teams across the UK, outside London. I think that's a think that's a really interesting point. In the same way that, are we a broadcast or a streamer or producer, or who is, who are our primary customers? I would say, I'm going to give you a slight cop out answer. Then I'm going to stick my neck on the line. So the cop out answer is, I'm not going to talk about shareholders here, because ultimately, the value of the company, its ability to grow, is based on shareholder value, but a lot of that is based on market sentiment, right? And I'm not the financial expert who’s going to comment in lots more detail on that. But I would argue, and I say this to advertisers, yes, advertisers are hugely important. Without them, we don't have the income stream in order to invest, grow our business, and it becomes a kind of cycle. However, without the viewers, we don't have the advertisers.  

So we’re making programs that are reaching the biggest possible audiences, that are diversifying the audience, brings in the advertisers. If tomorrow we didn't have viewers, advertisers would not stick around. So we have to keep that integrity. We have to keep making programs. And the reason why, I mean, listen, you talked about birthdays and your 100th birthday, and congratulations. Next year in 2025, ITV reaches its 70th anniversary. And that's 70 years of an ad funded broadcaster, and now broadcaster streamer in the UK. So 70 years since commercial advertising on TV in the UK started, and the reason that's so successful, and the reason that shows like Coronation Street have been running for 65 plus years, is because we've listened and learned from our viewers what they want, how we adapt, how we roll with the punches, how we evolve the content to keep number one in market. 

28:24 
Host: 
How do you do that though? You're broadcasting, you're sending content to your customers. How do you get that information back from them? People often see television as a one way flow. It's stuff that ITV sends to me, and I sit at home and watch, whether I'm watching it on my laptop or television, whatever, I'm still watching. How do you get that information back from me as a viewer, customer, so you can then shape your output for the future?  

28:49 
Jason: 
Listen, we research every single show through our commissioning teams, through our production teams, to learn, because otherwise you're based on the subjective view of the people making the shows, and you're kind of people back at the ranch. It's really important to understand what people like, how they think about things. We have a viewer panel that goes out every single week where we capture a lot of data. We do this for every single show. The way we do that has evolved over time, but that enables us to tweak shows year after year. Again, the enduring success of a love Island, an I'm a celebrity, a this morning, a loose women, is through listening to viewers. I think increasingly, obviously social media plays a part of that as well, because that's a much more direct, immediate way that people can feedback, but they can become echo chambers in their own right. So you look at that as indicative, but it doesn't just give you the answer. Sometimes you get a few noisy voices in there. You have to look at this with a good foundation of that. We also look at the demographics of who's watching. We look at the times that we schedule those shows. You know, think of the moods and mindsets. How you feel on a Monday evening is very different how you feel on a Saturday evening in terms of the viewing occasion. And technology is a great enabler for all of this, and how we can do this in a much more sophisticated way, how, then it links to advertisers and the impact that has on their campaigns, how we can measure outcomes with them as a result.  

30:13 
Host: 
Do you think that the advent of some technology, and you've mentioned social media comms and so on and so forth, and the ability to capture information, if you go out and get it and capture views, has moved it the sort of feeling from one of an audience for you to one of a community for ITV? And if you're thinking of a community for your product, for your content, how do you actually change the content of your programs based on the views of that community? And I don't mean there by how do you choose the programs, I mean that once you've got shows up and running, you mentioned some there, Loose Women and so on and so forth, that have been running for many, many years, how do you actually integrate the wants of that community into those shows? 

30:54 
Jason: 
Um, God, that is a very big question. I think it differs show by show. You have your super fans for every single show, you have your noisier fans as well. I think the important thing is not to oversimplify, there'll be different levels of interaction that people have with every single show. And you just gotta be careful not to just cater for the super fans. You're trying to bring in as many people as possible, trying to make it as inclusive and accessible as possible. That's a really key thing for any show we're making, that we make this feel inclusive for the viewer. Because that diversification, bringing in as many different types of people as possible is hugely important. I think the other thing to say is, depending on the show itself, the ability to influence what's going to be in the show has different timelines. So you take some of the daytime shows, Good Morning Britain, this morning, loose women, for instance. They are planning the show up until the day of. They are very topical, very updated. They might have themes that run over time based on particular events, moments in the calendar, but they are very topical. They are very interactive with their audience to understand what the audience wants, how to how to adapt. Whereas take a drama from a commissioner briefing that right through to that being on screen could easily be 18 months. Our job on some of those longer duration pieces, because often more money is at stake, is to also try and spot the trends further out. What might people want to watch in, think now, what might people want to watch in 2026? What are we commissioning now for 2026? So there's a constant balance, obviously, then it’s the art of the commissioners to be able to work out what we do, and we do a huge amount of research on that, to be able to slice and dice the budget accordingly. 

32:41 
Host: 
Research, particularly when it's research that, the game is futurism, you're trying to guess what people will like at some undefined point in the future, or even a defined point in future, is expensive to do. It's a large undertaking. Do you get the return on that investment? Do you feel that it's worth it? 

32:58 
Jason: 
I think, as with any brand, you are trying to measure the return on investment, both short and long term so we work that out as well. I think the other thing, just to maybe take this in a slightly different direction around content production, is the cost of making shows has gone up over time. It's one of the many post COVID things. So as the cost has gone up, your budgets don't go up in a commensurate way. So one of the things that we have invested further in, if you'll indulge me with giving another quote because I gave one before, this one's actually from Plato. And he said, our need will be the real creator. And when you have a need to do something different, it is quite liberating. It enables you to do things in a kind of very different way. That phrase, our need will be the real creator, I think has been sort of turned now into necessity is the mother of invention. But what we have done, we launched a division called B studio a year ago. The B stands for branded entertainment. And the whole idea is that when advertisers are advertising in the break, when they're doing it best, they are creating entertainment. They want to make the ads as entertaining as the shows. It is a moot point about how many of those are, I think, and I don't want to get drawn too much into that now, but many of the brands also, as well as sponsoring shows and integrating their brands into the shows through IP, have looked at how they can make shows with us. So we've now got an ad funded entertainment division, we've made 20 shows with brands in the last year. We've looked at ways in which we can spin that out into social content, and that's enabled brands to basically fund shows with us, sponsor the shows the brand is featured in the show in a way that kind of is fully compliant and has full editorial integrity. But we are growing this space massively. Probably the best case example is cooking with the stars, which is now in its fourth series, which we make with m and s, and that is fully funded by them. Their brand features in it in many ways, they bring that to life across their store estate and online. It works incredibly hard for them in terms of a return on investment, and it's now the second biggest cookery show on UK TV after Bake Off. It's bigger than celeb masterchef, and it's doing a fantastic job in that respect. So we think there's a really interesting development about how we scale things, how we make even more content working in partnership with brands. 

35:15 
Host: 
That's interesting. Other retail brands are, of course, available, I should say, particularly my wife works for m and s before the messages come in. But that's a great example. You've talked about ad supported television, or sponsor supported television, to some extent, with the brand sponsoring it. But actually, there's been a shift here as well. A really interesting shift isn't there, because you've actually moved from ad supported television, which you've been doing for 70 years, to now offering ad free subscription support for television. That's the opposite to what other streaming organisations have done. Amazon, very recently, of course, have moved exactly the opposite direction. They've gone from subscription supported television to ad supported television. How on earth do you reconcile those two models? At one point you're telling your audience, your viewers, your customers, we're going to give you ads and you're going to get free content. And then at the other point you're saying, actually, if you don't want the ads, you can pay us instead. 

36:16 
Jason: 
It’s interesting both in terms of what we're doing, as well as what the likes of Amazon and Disney and Netflix do. Let me talk about us first, then I'll just give a view on the market overall. So I think from our perspective, we're a PLC. We're here to maximise profit. Look at diversifying our revenue streams. And we are massively growing those revenue streams through the addressable advertising that we have an ITVX, as I've talked about so far, where we're serving ads through planet v into itvx for brands. But there are some people who don't want to watch our content with adverts in, who want to be able to access it differently, and are prepared to pay for it. I talked about a value exchange before. You get free access to our content in return for watching some targeted adverts. But for those who don't want to do that and are prepared to pay, it offers a very valuable revenue stream for us, and so it will be remiss of us not to consider that and think about the opportunity to drive a new revenue stream there, outside of advertising. I said, going back 10, 12, years, we were probably too reliant on advertising revenue as a business, and we diversify to buy production companies. So now you could say, well, look, we're growing our advertising revenues well, but in a market that's much more challenged, you've got to think about new ways to make money. This is being successful for us as an additional revenue stream for people we're not capturing within the ad funded version. Now, at the same time as we're doing that and looking at diversification, the likes of Amazon and Disney and Netflix are also looking at diversification, because what they recognise, many of their businesses are based on ARPU, average revenue per user, is there's an actual ceiling for a number of reasons, through the success of how they've grown their platforms, through the fact that there's only so many subscriptions all of us will tolerate. It's not just these, it's your Spotify. You know, all of these things that you have. And so there is a constant juggling of, right, well, I don't have to sign up to a contract there, so I'll do a month there, and then, when I've watched that, I'll do a month there. What they're looking at is, how can we drive a more sustainable and incremental revenue stream? I think the interesting thing is they've each used very different tactics. I think we're in early stages to know whether the different tactics each have used will win out. I think the businesses are very different. I mean Amazon, I think because of the phenomenal retail business that they have, means that they are not as reliant on purely content as say Netflix are, although Netflix have diversified into games as well now. And then Disney have the whole leisure Park sector outside this as well. So I think it'd be very interesting to see which model works out. I think from our point of view, it might sound like everything is up in the air. There's a market of total change. Well, when we look at it, when you look at the numbers over the last sort of four or five years, actually, in the last couple of years, there's a real stability there. There's stability in terms of overall kind of viewing patterns, stabilising in market. There's the kind of tectonic plates shifting. So for us, it's the tectonic plates between a bit of a decline in linear broadcast view, but an increase that's broadly making that up for streaming on itvx, and that's that balancing out. But if you look over the last year or two, there's been almost like a stabilisation on viewing of subscription VOD. And I think part of the reason for that is, you look at the streaming capabilities of UK households, we're kind of reaching that peak level now. It grew a lot over the last few years in terms of the megabytes that enabled you to stream content in a meaningful way, I think it's something like about 30 megabytes a second you need to be able to watch content meaningfully. Most of us have high speed internet, and so you've reached that kind of saturation point. So if you're a Netflix or Amazon or Disney, you're thinking, how do I make money differently? And I think looking at this from an advertising point of view is key. 

Now you could say, well, that's a big threat to ITV. For us, the more places that offer a premium video advertising opportunity on TV, of which we include them, I think the better for two reasons. It ups our game. It creates the competition. It creates the challenge of making great content. The quality of content now is a million times better than those halcyon days you were being nostalgic about when there were three channels, because back in those days you could afford to be complacent. People had nowhere else to go. I think the other thing is, is that it's never been a better time to be an advertiser, in so far as the opportunities you have to be able to use TV, because all of those platforms means that there should be a significant growth opportunity for brands, but also for us and the TV industry as a whole. And that's partly why Netflix, Amazon, Disney, come into thinkbox. They see this, and they see that working in partnership is absolutely the way to go. So I think within that, the important thing for us as ITV, is to make sure we have a USP. We've got a proposition to advertisers that's unique versus our competition, that's collaborative in the right moments with our competition, but that is future proofed. And the way you make it future proofed is outcomes. You measure the impact of advertising on business, and for as long as there's a multiplier effect, and advertisers spend money, and they can see the impact it has on their business, they will continue to spend. And that is the holy grail that we're aiming towards. 

41:34 
Host: 
There's the Holy Grail. But as you said before, without the viewers, the advertising would be nothing. You are competing with everybody else for eyeballs. And in order to do that, you've got to create great shows. Take us behind the scenes. Before we finish, take us behind the scenes a little bit. Indulge me, indulge us, indulge our audience. Where does it all start this stuff? We’ve spoken about some great shows, some that have been going for a long time, some that have actually moved the news. You mentioned the mr. Bates and the post office. Where does all this stuff start? How do new shows actually get made? Where does it all come from? 

42:09 
Jason: 
I'm going to give you a really simple answer this. Because I don't make shows. I help brands to make shows through B studio. I help place brands around shows. But as with most good things it comes from a brief, and it comes from a good brief. So for every marketeer on here, you know that the better the brief you write, the better the response you'll get. So we've got commissioners to write great briefs, and then you brief it out to market, and that enables you to get the best ideas back. And you're constantly selling. If you work in marketing, you’re listening to this, you're a salesperson. You're selling internally to stakeholders, to your FD for why they should invest, to your CEO, about how you want to drive the brand strength. You're selling to your agencies, about why they should continue putting their best people on it and coming up with the best ideas about why your brand's going to win next year. And then when you put that campaign live, you are selling to customers to get them to buy your products.  

So I've slightly twisted your answer there, but I think how it starts is a great brief. We know our audiences. Knowing your audience is probably the single most important thing. Listen to your audience, know them, know how they are evolving. Try and make yourself as attractive to as many different ones as possible. You want to see what the emerging trends are, but equally, not be a slave to it. I think you can do all the research in the world, but until you go live with something, you never know the impact it will have. And going back to Mr. Bates versus the post office, I remember going to an industry event where we showed a trailer for that, a promo trailer about 2, 3, months before it was on air. So it was autumn 2023, so this time last year, and it looked great, great trailer, lots of celebs, nice soundtrack, but no one knew the impact it would have. And I was speaking to a marketeer who used to work at the post office. Doesn't work there now, and he joined there on the 20th of December, 11 days before the show launched. And they had no idea the impact this would have. I don't think any of us did. And for us, when we're making great TV, it moves the nation. It moves how they think, how they feel, how they behave. It changes minds. For us, it's about reflecting the nation. It's entertaining the nation, but it's also about challenging people. And many of the issues in society, the way that we become either more tolerant, more questioning, kinder, I think comes from what we see on TV. TV holds up a mirror to society. It reflects it, but it also shapes it.  

44:40 
Host: 
It does. I mean, I was watching bits of the National Television Awards last night, and as soon as that was named as a nominee, I said to my wife, it's guaranteed to win. The other shows in the category were great, by the way, but they must have been cursing the fact they were up against Mr. Bates, because it was a shoe in that they were going to win. Because, as you say, it changed the news. It changed the nation. And it was a truly innovative piece of work. But that innovation we talk about a lot in marketing, creativity, innovation, ideas – they're some of the hardest things to find in any branch of the creative industry. And yes, you can know your audience, but how do you keep people innovating, keep creating, making sure that this stuff is fresh? I mean, you've been doing this for 70 years. Some people will say there's nothing new under the sun, but there has to be new things, otherwise people get tired of it. 

45:29 
Jason: 
There absolutely is. And I think, I've given you a couple of quotes, let me give a third quote, and this one was actually from Mary beard. Mary beard, the historian. She was asked about the impact of Mr. Bates versus the post office. And I think there's an interesting thing what she said for what brands can learn about advertising and messages. She said, look, this is a story that for 20 years, journalists in print, on TV, documentary makers have talked about, but for 20 years, they've been talking to the head. And what you can do in drama through telling stories from a first-person perspective, from people, the real people, is you connect with the heart. And what that says to me, which you can apply to advertising messages on TV is, if you run a rational campaign, it will only take your business so far. When you invest in motion, in that message as well, when you connect with the viewer, when you connect with your customers, that's when you create the impact. And it's proven through a number of different metrics that the most effective campaigns are emotional campaigns, because then it plays with your mental availability, your memory, fame, and it lodges there. And I think whatever category, people listening to this podcast are listening to, I would hold that true, that emotion Trumps reason every day of the week. 

47:05 
Host: 
Emotion and storytelling, they're a common theme, a popular theme on the CIM podcast. Maybe you've answered my final question to some degree. My final question, Jason is, what advice would you give to marketers who are looking to leverage television as part of their marketing activity? 

47:21 
Jason: 
I think it depends on what you work on, what stage of a brand's journey you're on, but I think I would say, ultimately, as a brand where you're trying to sell products, you are selling in generally a category where you're up against a number of other brands. You may not be the biggest player. And the more you entertain people, the more you differentiate in what you say, the more you disrupt, the braver you are, the less following the rules, alongside the insight that drives that understanding with your audience, understanding the environment in which your campaign is going to be consumed, is it Tuesday 9pm or is it Saturday evening with the family? The more you measure it through looking at outcomes not just outputs, and the more you think about the targeting opportunities, the more successful it will be. And from our point of view, we've set up our proposition around four main things, which we think is what makes TV brilliant in 2024 and to an extent, these would apply to any of the TV companies in the UK, but I think they apply to itv best, which I can say because I'm here on this podcast with you. And that's TV's ability to live a mass reach. What I know is that 100,000 pounds spent on TV will reach 90% of the population and 10 million people in a week. It's great value for money. Secondly, addressability at scale. I've talked about the power of first party data. Thirdly, creativity, through owning these production companies, we own IP, we can integrate brands into shows. We can think about how we can use talent and IP around that to help grow brands. And fourthly, outcomes, and narrowing that gap between the activity you run and the impact it has, and make sure that you capture the multiplier effect. Now we do that for new TV brands through initiatives such as match funding and creative production support, right through to established brands. And I'd say, if anyone's listen to this who wants to know how we do that and is sceptical, then challenge me. 

49:33 
Host: 
Challenge you, write to you. Ping you on social media or? 

49:36 
Jason: 
I’m on LinkedIn. So find me on LinkedIn. 

49:38 
Host: 
Thank you Jason Spencer, that is fantastic insights and a great way to celebrate our 100th episode of this podcast. And really positive I think that TV is not going anywhere. it is going everywhere. It's been an absolutely fantastic show. Thank you very much for joining us. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I hope actually you'll come back on the CIM podcast, perhaps before we are 200 episodes old. 

50:02 
Jason: 
Absolutely and I can't think of a better way to spend my birthday. So thank you for having me.  

50:07 
Host: 
Yes and happy birthday again. Cheers, Jason.  

50:10 
Outro: 
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