Welcoming the new year and the new opportunities, we dived into the topic of communication campaigns effectiveness and what trends emerged on the market in the past year.

Television has successfully proven to be the undisputed champion of delivering and building long-term added value for the brands. It also influences and supports short-term campaign activations, while being a unique full-funnel solution leveraging the brand fame.

Major advertisers are still spending big on traditional TV. The top 10 TV advertisers in the US market have spent $ 10 billion on advertising. Brands that were newcomers to television advertising spent more than $1 billion on TV ads. More than 2000 companies are new, and have made national television 

part of their media mix for the first time, according to an analysis of media trends by the MediaRadar advertising research platform.

Digital-first brands are turning to brand-building to scale their businesses. In the US, the Video Advertising Bureau noted a 60% increase in TV spend by direct-to-consumer brands.

A pivot back to brand building is set to be a major trend for 2020. With TV and premium video recognized as its main tools. Marketers are re-assessing their spending plans for 2020 with a renewed focus on long-term impact over performance marketing with short-term payoffs. Big parts of the brands are choosing deep brand integrations in premium media brands, in order to easily leverage their brand fame. Such titles like Bulgaria’s Got Talent, The Voice, MasterChef, etc. are traditionally highlights of bTV Media Group’s content portfolio. In 2019 bTV Media Group established also its new brand bStars for celebrity endorsements by the faces part of our stellar portfolio.

The shorter advertising spots are a trend that we see in foreign markets, as well as locally. This trend aligns to the widening of the portfolio of premium video platforms. While 10-15 years ago in Bulgaria the landscape was entirely dominated by the 30”spot, in 2019 in line with the global developments the 15”, 20” and the 30” spot are almost equally used (source: GARB).

Meanwhile, globally addressable TV is emerging with enormous power. Living up to the expectations addressable TV is coming fast as a main tool complementing rather than replacing the ‘national’ ads. Here the collaboration between the content creators will drive the scale of success. As part of the EMA in 2019 bTV Media Group established а cooperation with the top broadcasters in Europe in the strategic directions - streaming, technology and monetization to meet the progressive development and expectations of the media environment.

The real strength are activations based on data-driven, audience-based buying. Aligned to those developments is the DMP tool, which has been successfully implemented by bTV Media Group over the past year in its digital space.

The Data Management Platform offers the ability to monitor the behavior of our users across our digital assets. Enriched data is the most valuable currency in a digital environment that helps us reach target audiences in an authentic environment. DMP gives us a clearer user profile and the ability to serve brand messages in an audience-skewed manner.

In the era of accessible mega technologies, AI enhancements and flexible flat screen displays the audience is more demanding than ever toward the quality of content. High technology and impressive state-of-the-art production quality were the focus of bTV Media Group throughout 2019. We were able to establish and set high standards across all our assets. In addition, our new bTV Studio reconfirmed the superb choice of the audience during the most important public and political events throughout the year.

As an informative leader in Bulgaria, bTV News evolved the ways of providing high quality journalism to different audience segments and people of all ages. More and more people chose to receive news instantly through their mobile devices – on btvnovinite.bg or via our bTV News app. On the other hand, live TV newscasts continue to have the status of an important event in the daily lives of a large part of the audience. We see our news broadcasts and current affairs programs among the most watched television programs on national air, and the news site btvnovinite.bg is continuously among the top 5 of the most visited Bulgarian sites.

Content (not platforms) dominates the user journey of the audience. Content has been the focal point of all our major projects, empowered by all our platforms – in TV, radio and digital.

Here is a brief outline of some of the most exciting multi-platform brand integrations over the past year:

In bTV Media Group we continue to build successful brand identities and offer solutions that drive real business results. Our Sales teams are available to create your next intriguing brand interaction.

Sources:

https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/news/2020-is-the-year-marketers-re-invest-in-their-brands/43107

https://www.emarketer.com/content/tv-year-in-review-advertising-remains-strong-but-road-ahead-is-murky

https://www.adweek.com/tv-video/televisions-biggest-advertisers-spent-almost-10-billion-in-2019/

https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/most-marketers-have-used-advanced-tv-freewheel-says

https://www.v-net.tv/2019/12/05/why-2020-will-herald-the-next-era-of-addressable-tv/

https://www.weareageist.com/culture/the-future-is-here-now-3-key-takeaways-from-ces-2019/

Contacts:

bTV Media Group
Sales department
Sofia 1463
Bulgaria sq. No. 1
National Palace of Culture, 11th floor
Тel. (+359) 2 9176 800
Тel. (+359) 2 9156 564
Fax: (+359) 2 9176 886
e-mail: [email protected]