| As Jason Damata noted in our Hot List newsletter, the NewFronts, which started out as a place for digital publishers to complete their “pivot to video” have wound up being something else completely. Which is not all that unusual in our digital era, but still bears examination. In this case, the belles of the NewFronts ball are VIZIO, LG and Samsung, all of whom have turned the TV from a dumb box into a smart one with its own sizable slate of free ad-supported content. Why It Matters In case you hadn’t noticed, the TV, which was long one of the most expensive screens in the house, is now far and away the cheapest. Shop the right sales and you can score one for under $100. What keeps those prices low is the development of an alternate revenue stream in the form of the TV OS. It allows the OEMs to make money off of ads they place on their home screen and from ads they sell on their booming FAST services. Both of which were on display during the NewFronts. There are more similarities than differences among OEMs, which is not a bad thing—the more consumers come to expect something from a device, regardless of manufacturer, the more they’re prone to accept and use it. This year, we’re seeing more original content and live events: Samsung is hosting a Jonas Brothers concert, VIZIO is giving us the Billboard Women In Music Awards and LG is launching a channel with Fifty Cent, who made a live appearance at their show. The OEM FASTs are both growing up and growing big too, with more and better content. That second part is the part that matters: most ad-supported TV is still on linear because there are way more ad slots on linear. That’s not a typo—Netflix, Max and Disney may be running ads, but most of their US viewers are still watching ad free. Not that they tell us those numbers, but it’s pretty safe to say that we’d have heard of them if they were worth bragging about. That means most of the streaming inventory is on FAST and Pluto, Xumo and Tubi only have so much inventory. That leaves the OEM FASTs, which come with the added benefit of their own ACR data for measurement as well as sizable install bases and a more demographically diverse audience. They very much serve the role that cable used to play, and that’s not a bad thing. Ditto Roku, which decided to skip any of this year’s Fronts, relying instead on what they claim are a series of hosted dinners, but which sounds more like they want to differentiate themselves from the triumvirate of Samsung, VIZIO and LG. Roku was the first player in the game, they have a massive audience between their own TVs, TVs running their OS and the legacy dongle business, but they’ve been struggling to break out in many overseas markets, Europe in particular. Whereas LG and Samsung are already global behemoths and VIZIO is now owned by Walmart, a global behemoth in its own right. So there’s that and it’s not an either/or thing—the market is big enough for everyone. What You Need To Do About It If you are buying ads and you want to reach viewers on streaming, the OEM FASTs are a logical place to go. You have measurement, you have the ability to track viewers across streaming and linear so you don’t inundate them with the same ad, you have lots of potential for shoppable content and, most of all, you have an audience that’s expecting ads and thrilled that the load is much lighter than it is on cable. That’s not nothing, and it’s why they’re hosting NewFronts. It’s a good way of reminding people how far they’ve come, where they’re going and why they’re a good alternative to the SVOD services and a good companion for linear. Something to think about before you write off television. READ THE FULL WEEK IN REVIEW — or listen to it — ON TVREV |
