TVOOH combines the scale and storytelling power of TV with the targeting and flexibility of digital. C-Screens’ CEO offers advice for planners considering TV’s ‘third place’.
You don’t need to be an expert to know that TV has never been more under pressure to command the marketing plans and budgets it used to. Certain media owners are now emphasising ‘video’ to justify why they should be seen as on par with linear TV, BVoD, and the likes of Netflix. But even within the two ‘places’ of linear TV and video, audiences are splintering further.
In linear, viewers are spread across numerous broadcast and cable networks, regional offerings, and niche channels, making mass reach harder to achieve than ever.
Meanwhile, in the video space, fragmentation is even more pronounced, with audiences scattered across an ever-growing range of streaming services, platforms, and devices such as Meta, YouTube and TikTok.
For media planners looking to create mass coverage through their TV & AV activations, this represents a real challenge.
How TV fragmentation impacts AV plans
With more channels in play, the cost and complexity of ensuring sufficient reach and frequency increases, as does the complexity of managing all this within a coherent, cross-platform strategy.
Then there’s the additional challenge of overcoming ad fatigue. With audiences increasingly bombarded with ads across an ever-expanding range of TV and digital video environments, there’s a very real risk that they will stop paying attention.
Within the ‘two places’ of TV, these challenges play out differently. In linear, advertisers compete for shrinking prime-time attention amid cluttered ad breaks, while in video, targeting frequency issues can lead to overexposure (it’s telling that 30% of marketers and publishers believe more efficient frequency capping would increase their CTV advertising spend).
However, consumers expect brands to understand their preferences and deliver messages that feel timely and contextually relevant.
According to recent research, 64% of consumers prefer to buy from companies that tailor their experience to their wants and needs. For media planners, the challenge lies in maintaining visibility without overwhelming audiences and ensuring they reach the right ones.
How TV’s new “place” can help
The good news is that a third TV place is emerging that promises to help solve planners’ challenges around improving reach, attention, and incremental outcomes.
TV Out-of-Home (TVOOH) is that third place, extending television into screens placed in public, high-attention, high-dwell environments like pubs, gyms, and transport hubs.
TVOOH opens up access to audiences not captured by traditional at-home TV metrics, reaching people who spend less time with linear or connected TV but are highly receptive in social, shared, or transitional settings.
Its diverse locations enable planners to match content and advertising to context, such as sports programming in bars, family entertainment in leisure venues, and travel and lifestyle content in airports and hotels.
Crucially, TVOOH combines the scale and storytelling power of TV with the targeting and flexibility of digital, delivering hyper-relevant audiences at scale in non-skippable, 100% brand-safe environments.
For planners, it’s an opportunity to create a seamless, multi-environment TV experience that connects audiences wherever they watch.
Briefing in TVOOH
Media planners looking to integrate TVOOH into their AV plans should consider the following:
Defining your strategy. Articulate why TVOOH is being added to your AV plan. Determine whether its role is to extend reach beyond at-home linear and CTV audiences, build frequency among occasional TV viewers, capture attention in high-dwell environments, or drive contextual relevance. Align TVOOH with plans for linear TV and CTV.
Coordinating creative and messaging. Brief creative teams to adapt AV assets for screen context and dwell time (this could include making edits to fit into half-time breaks at football matches, for instance).
Integrating content and experience. Blend AV content with experiential storytelling. For example, live screenings, sponsorship takeovers, or interactive brand zones can drive attention and emotional connection far beyond a standard ad spot.
Unifying audience insight and measurement. Demand location, audience, and content data from your TVOOH partner to support transparent reporting on reach, dwell, and engagement. This helps demonstrate incremental value and prove how TVOOH complements linear and connected TV in the AV mix.
Partnering with end-to-end specialists. Look for partners that can provide full campaign support from bespoke ‘Event TV’ activations through to ‘Always on’ screens supplying the right audience at scale to mirror the impact that traditional linear TV has. This eliminates the need for multiple vendors and ensures creative, data, reporting, measurement and operations are seamlessly aligned.
TVOOH, TV’s “third place,” gives planners a way to extend reach, boost attention, and drive incremental outcomes with audio-visual storytelling in environments where traditional screens can’t reach.
As such, it should be seen as a key AV component of every media planner’s toolkit.
To quote Lindsay Clay at Thinkbox, ‘TV isn’t dead, it’s just had babies’ If this is true, then TVOOH – having been around for over 14 years- is TV’s moody teenager.
Source: uk.themedialeader.com