Australia’s Network 10 plans on rolling out new ad formats on its 10 Play AVOD service, including a pause option, to six new platforms this year following a successful launch last month on Telstra TV.
It’s part of a unified app strategy, Liz Baldwin, GM – Digital at Network 10, told the Mediatel Videoscape Europe virtual event last week: rather than having to build separate apps for each platform or operating system – which is both expensive and difficult to manage – “the new unified app platform completely tears that paradigm apart, and it allows us to start moving everything onto a single code base”.
Having completed the build for the Telstra launch – a rebadged Roku, which is one of the more challenging platforms to develop for, she remarked – “it’s a pretty straightforward build on to the other platforms and so it’ll be weeks not months before we start rolling these things out”.
None of what the broadcaster is now doing would be possible without that unified app strategy, she added, explaining that “our designers are not constrained any more by what the technology of those particular boxes or TVs make possible, but they can really think about what is just a rich, beautiful, immersive experience for people and bring that to life”.
For the user that means a better experience, whether on catch-up or browsing, that’s consistent across all platforms, and faster content delivery.
It also includes new advertising options, such as Premium Pause, which enables advertisers to deliver a brand experience outside of pre- and mid-rolls. This was developed on the basis of data that showed 25,000 pause events on Roku devices every day during a quiet period of the year.
“It’s high impact, but it’s non-intrusive,” Baldwin explained of the user-initiated format. “It’s not interfering with their content experiences, it’s not over the top of content. We think about the pause ad more like a really beautiful magazine experience.
“It’s a different part of the funnel than broadcast ads,” she added, “but there are so many possibilities with it once you’ve got logged-in members and rich profiles of people.”
Sourced from Mediatel
