The Czech Republic’s Prima Group significantly increased the interest of advertisers in its HbbTV platform in 2020.
According to the company, the number of campaigns increased by 47% year-on-year, while use of HbbTV Creator, which the Prima Group, in cooperation with Kinet, provided to advertisers free of charge, increased by 76%.
Commenting on the development, Josef Stransky, director of technology at the Prima Group, said: “The red button on the Prima channels is seen by more than 2 million viewers. The HbbTV iPrima application is visited by over 550,000 viewers per month. As in the iPrima.cz video archive, the most watched series include the series Slunecna, Polda, Sestricky, documentaries and film premieres”.
Petr Hatlapatka, head of online sales at Media Club, which represents the Prima group, added: “In the fall of this year, we introduced a new advertising format, Splash Screen, which has 100% visibility. This is an advertising format on the iPrima home screen. Switch-In remains the best-selling format in HbbTV. This format reaches an average CTR of 2.3% in 2020. It can reach up to 300,000 unique spectators at one time. The frequency of the weekly campaign usually ranges from three impressions to a unique device”.
Another trend in HbbTV is the increase in regionally targeted advertising. Clients who target, for example, only Prague, Central Bohemia, Brno, or narrower and more creditworthy income groups are increasingly advertising here.
Hatlapatka continued: “As many as half of our clients who target regionally understand that TV is a nationwide medium, but thanks to the use of HbbTV, they can also communicate locally with a lower budget, while being visible on TV screens”.
In the spring, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Prima used geo targeting, as well as the flexibility and speed of deploying campaigns at HbbTV to support regions and municipalities. More than 20 cities and municipalities used the offer for a free, regionally targeted information campaign free of charge. These campaigns reached over 3,000,000 viewers.
Hatlapatka concluded by saying that “At the beginning of the autumn season, we piloted a post buy campaign for the first time together for HbbTV and TV campaigns. In case of interest from clients, we will continue to develop this project”.