Can Audio Watermarked Advertising save Commercial TV ?

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Intrasonics

8 min readOct 29, 2018

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It has been mooted for some time but in 2017 it finally happened. Global digital ad spend overtook TV ad spend for the first time.

Digital advertising spend last year was $209 billion (41% of the market) compared to $178 billion(35% percent of the market) for TV.

This watershed moment has been driven by a number of factors.

One that sticks out is that linear broadcast TV no longer seems a good place to reach younger consumers. Sixty-one percent of young adults in the US say the primary way they watch TV is through streaming services like Netflix and HBO Go and just five percent of millennials mainly watch TV through a digital antenna.

Another reason is that tracking the effectiveness of a TV advertisement is harder and results are less concrete than digital.

So, as the spending on online ads skyrockets, many brands and advertising agencies have subscribed to the idea that online advertising can deliver more bang for their buck and TV’s time is over.

Which Half is Wasted?

However, as a recent report from Ebiquity shows us, there is an over-confidence in the effectiveness of digital advertising.

“There is a clear disconnect between the scale of investment in online media and the value it delivers.” — Re-evaluating Media, Ebiquity 2018

And brands that have stopped using TV ads see that campaigns take much longer to see results compared to just using digital.

“TV as a traditional medium is still important. When we run a heavy TV schedule, we see a lift in sales and product awareness. We need to run two weeks of digital to get the reach of one day of broadcast.”
- Rich Lehrfeld, Senior VP Global Brand, Marketing & Comms. American Express

Experienced marketers recognise that TV advertising remains a vital part of the mix. It’s important for brand story telling, and a good TV ad can hold the viewer’s attention and fire up emotions in a way that creates memories and promotes brand recall. Linear programming means TV is an inherently passive medium with a captive audience. Ads can’t easily be routinely skipped or flung off-screen with a finger as they can on YouTube and Facebook and there is no ad-blocker built-in to the TV set to contend with.

So, despite there now being more money being spent on digital, a very healthy £5.38B is projected to be spent on TV advertising in the UK (and $79.4B in the US) in 2019. That’s still an awful lot of money being spent away from the online platforms.

Which Half is Wasted? — As Rick Webb has been exploring with his series of articles on the subject of advertising, knowing what works matters more than what can be tracked. One such article rather interestingly suggests that Google is over-valued from a shareholder perspective because it is locked out of accessing TV advertising budgets.

I can think of no reason that Google deserves its PE ratio of 36.5. It has zero advantages in the one big growth area it can realistically go after: The brand budgets currently spent on TV.

Google, Amazon or Facebook could tap into some of this revenue indirectly by harnessing the interest of TV viewers more directly and effectively than they do currently (read more below).

The Second Screen

We do know that the vast majority of TV viewers are multi-screening (watching with a mobile device or computer) but still paying attention to the ads on TV. As a result, most viewers are also searching for more information about the things they see on the TV.

Google have published some recommendations on how to maximise the uplift in attributable searches from TV ads:

Even with a very clear call-to-action flashed up at the end of the ad as Google suggests, the consumer can end up making a generic search for the product category or spelling the brand name incorrectly.

This can mean consumers fail to find the product they are looking for or, if an SEO strategy isn’t designed to support the ad correctly, consumers can be driven towards a competitor brand.

For example, a generic search for a new-to-market voice-assistant device may return results for the existing market leader.

The TV ad may engage the viewer’s emotion and raise an intent to purchase a product but knowing this for sure is actually quite difficult.

Google and Amazon are keenly interested in what ads are being watched and by whom on over-the-air channels. A huge amount of ad revenue is being spent away from their platforms. Without indirectly tracking TV ad exposure, important marketing data is being missed and there is no opportunity for follow-up advertising.

In 2014 Google purchased Adometry to acquire their attribution algorithms that track web searches against exposure to TV advert broadcasts.

These algorithms look for likely related searches made shortly after the time an ad is known to air, and track any resulting visits to product pages or purchases. This is far from a perfect solution, however. It assumes marketers cover the range of full search phrases consumers may enter in the search box and requires marketers to know the time the ad airs. Furthermore, to see specifically which variant of a TV ad gives the biggest uplift in searches data from similar spots must be aggregated in order to see responses clearly. Insights are hard earned and based on inference rather than any explicit tracking.

A better solution — “Connected Ads”

At Intrasonics, we provide audio watermarking solutions that help connect consumers and brands.

We’ve been exploring how audio watermarking could be used with an app that already has access to the microphone and is always running in the background. For Android this app might be Google Search or Play Store. For Amazon it might be the Amazon Shopping app (or FireOS itself). Facebook it could be the Facebook app or Messenger app.

Our idea is to use audio watermarking to simplify and make seamless the transition from TV screen to mobile device by raising a notification automatically at the end of an advertisement. The viewer can then choose to tap the notification and be taken to a purchase page, or to search results focused on the product advertised.

Notification triggered from TV advert with branded call-to-action

Ad exposure, click-through and conversions can be tracked directly and unambiguously and are attributable to a specific user watching a specific ad placement. There are no fumbled searches from users or SEO strategies to worry about. Consumers will be safely taken to a specific URL and not end up in the hands of a competitor to the advertiser.

From a privacy perspective, consumers can be assured no samples of audio leave their device to be analysed on a server. Consumers will only see notifications relevant to them based on their profile and if ignored these notifications will disappear automatically.

Audio watermarking used in this way reduces friction for the consumer making it easy for them to discover and purchase products they are interested in. It offers marketers an incontrovertible way to track the effectiveness of their advertising and, importantly for the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook, it offers a way of tapping in to the global TV advertising spend.

The concept could even be extended to digital assistant devices such as Amazon Echo Show, Facebook Portal or Google Home Hub.

Is this enough to boost TV ad spend?

We think so. Audio watermarking bridges the digital gap from screen to sofa. For the likes of Amazon, Google and Facebook this means TV advertising can be harnessed and reported in the same way as digital advertising and help drive hard-to-reach consumers directly to their services.

However, for Connected Ads to work seamlessly for all consumers, audio watermark decoding needs to be integrated at the platform-level by at least one of the digital giants. At Intrasonics we’re working hard to make this happen. The first to do this can effectively claim the Connected Ads space and become the product discovery brand that transitions TV viewers online.

With TV advertising being tracked accurately and the ROI via notification click-throughs be easily measured, we believe that a confidence will return and commercial broadcasters will see an uptick in demand for ad spots. This might just reverse the trends we’re seeing now in ad spend and help save an ailing commercial TV industry.

Intrasonics

Intrasonics, based in Cambridge UK, is a leading global provider of audio recognition technology.

Our audio watermarking and fingerprinting tech is widely used for audience research, synchronised apps and interactive toys.

We are market leaders in providing the tools (SDK, Software/Hardware Encoders) required for audio recognition and response triggers to help our customers monetise on the moment of engagement. Our technology has been fully protected by more than 20 patents in this area.

www.intrasonics.com

Further Reading

Can Audio Watermarked Advertising save Commercial TV ?

Which Half is Wasted?

The Second Screen

A better solution — “Connected Ads”

Is this enough to boost TV ad spend?

Intrasonics

Written by Stephen Beattie