On demand services belonging to the largest broadcasters in Poland allocated an average of 15% of their airtime to advertising in February and the first half of March.
As a result, according to a Wavemaker and GroupM analysis, clutter in VOD was already close, and in the case of Player even higher. The 15% was equivalent to an average of 9 minutes of advertising per hour, so 3 minutes below the ad limit for classic TV. The average for the VOD services Player, ipla and TVP VOD was equal to the clutter on the main TV channels, where the average is slightly reduced by TVP stations without ad interruptions. However, in the case of Player the ad time of 20% was higher than that for classic TV.
Despite the high advertising load, broadcasters’ VOD services note a high level of viewability. This applies in particular to TVP VOD, where the clutter is significantly lower than in commercial stations’ services. A Gemius AdReal study shows that the visibility of ads on all broadcasters’ VOD pages exceeds 80%.
Although the lock-down has resulted in the reach of VOD services increasing by at least 10% a week, GroupM does not believe this will translate directly into ad investment in the e-video sector.
According to Agnieszka Lizon, digital trading director at GroupM, “Budgets are melting in some categories, and their declines are not currently offset by increases in others. The resources of websites, due to their popularity, are naturally increasing, and as a result, clutter in players should decrease. So this even means improving the quality of this channel for marketers.
“As for the level of advertising expenditure in VOD, I assume an optimistic slight downward revision, i.e. from 10% predicted at the beginning of the year to 3 -4 percent compared to the level from 2019. This means that the value of the video advertising market will not exceed PLN1 billion (€220 million) for now”.
