Published:  3.2.2020

Targeting commercial messages to specific groups is very efficient when using online advertising. If you search a hardware store website for prices of roof tiles, you can expect to come across advertisements for Ormax roof tiles on Facebook, hs.fi, Google and mtvuutiset.fi over the next few days. It is easy to identify internet users who are interested in specific products based on their online behaviour. 

However, the effectiveness of online advertising is hampered by the fact that users often find advertisements a nuisance when they are trying to find a specific piece of information. Most users browse websites to find answers to everyday conundrums. As for social media, it is so saturated with advertising that it is sometimes considered to hamper the service itself. This means that, from the perspective of effective advertising, internet users are often in the wrong mood for making purchase decisions. 

Television, on the other hand, is unbeatable when it comes to effectiveness, in addition to which research has shown that its viewers are more receptive and more often in the mood for making purchases than the users of any other media. Furthermore, mass media is an unbeatable tool for brand and brand recognition creation. When you can tell something to hundreds of thousands or millions of people at one go, you can rapidly spread your message – after all, television reaches 3.6 million people in Finland on a daily basis. However, targeting is often seen as a problem with television – or, more specifically, the problem is that targeting is mainly restricted to the viewer target groups. 

But what if the strengths of online and television advertising could be combined? How would you feel communicating to millions of television viewers personally and simultaneously? Or what if you could activate target audiences watching entertainment so that they make transactions directly from their couch? 

These online advertising tools have already been combined with various so-called Total TV campaigns, in which online video and campaigns using linear commercial breaks are combined, with activation elements combined with the former. Hybrid TV enables the use of these features in television advertising as well, and everything can be accessed through the same screen easily with a remote control. Hybrid TV is genuinely Total TV. 

Digita, together with the Finnish television companies, has created various new Hybrid TV advertising products, which have been presented to the Finnish audience in the past two years. The public is most familiar with the voting services launched in connection with various phenomenon programmes, with such services also providing advertisers and programme partners with a platform for commercial visibility. 

The effect of new products is amazing: typically half of the Hybrid TV viewers use the complementary service offered during a programme. The average time spent in the service – with the advertiser’s brand – can be several minutes, depending on the types of additional services the advertiser offers to viewers in connection with the voting. On the other hand, it only took a little more than three minutes to activate thousands of Hybrid TV households with the complementary service through which the content of the live Putous show could be affected last spring. This means that attraction, a pioneer approach, effectiveness, coverage and speed are combined in these advertising products in unparalleled ways. 

Your next question is how many Hybrid TV viewers there are. Quite many: nearly half a million households have a hybrid TV that is connected to the Internet, with each having an average of two viewers. 

The television industry has thus already begun to create more effective TV advertising through practical campaigns. As Finnish households are replacing their television sets for other reasons as well, they most often purchase a device that enables new advertising methods: combining the coverage and speed of linear TV with the targeting and features provided by online technology. So make sure you know how you can exploit the full potential of TV advertising in the future! 

Teppo Ahonen
Director, Video delivery services
Digita