Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent a major opportunity for broadcasters: a largely untapped pool of potential clients who collectively control a considerable amount of ad spend. The reverse is also true. Broadcasters aren’t having to drag SMEs kicking and screaming away from the tech platforms they’re used to working with – those who have invested in SME-facing products are generally seeing very high levels of interest from potential new partners.
This has been the case for MFE – MediaForEurope, which launched a new self-serve platform for SMEs called Mediaset AdManager in Italy last year. The new tool was developed and launched by MFE Advertising, the international media coordination hub for the sales houses of MFE’s companies.
Addressable TV products, such as targeting capabilities which the company rolled out via its HbbTV-enabled L-shaped ad format a few years back, had already generated significant interest from small businesses said Paola Colombo, chief digital officer at MFE Advertising. And since launching the self-serve product back in September, Colombo says the company has been overwhelmed with the number of leads it has received from SMEs eager to advertise on TV.
An easier first step
The self-serve platform allows advertisers to plan, target, and run campaigns using these L-shaped formats, which have been part of the Italian broadcaster’s offering for over five years. Also known as ‘Lanner ads’, these display units sit in an L-shaped frame around the edge of the TV screen and run for 15 seconds during content, rather than during the ad break. They include a call to action as well – if a viewer presses ‘OK’ on their remote, they’re taken through to a landing page with more information about the product.
The fact that Lanner ads use display creative makes them a natural draw for SMEs. For the time being, creating a video asset – especially one fit for TV – can be too expensive for small businesses (though Colombo expects that might change in the future thanks to AI).
“Lanner ads are an easier first step for small and medium businesses in TV,” she said. “You can use an impactful display creative, which gives you the flexibility to deliver extra content on a landing page. You have access to great reach within high quality content because it’s linear TV, and at the same time you have flexibility with targeting. Most companies that have reached out to us about the platform were already aware of the power of the media, and they’re now really enthusiastic about the idea that they can advertise on TV.”
The Lanner format has already proven it can drive key KPIs like awareness and intent to buy. And over the years MFE Advertising has built up know-how on creative optimisation and campaign set ups, including cases where the combination of an effective format, flexible targeting, and TV’s reach have delivered strong results for SMEs. At the same time, the company had perceived that there was a strong willingness to test the format by SMEs.
But the Italian broadcaster, as is typically the case in the TV world, wasn’t set up to cater to these brands. Many didn’t have enough money to meet minimum spends, and the process of booking airtime would often be too complex compared to the size and timing of a campaign. The introduction of audience profiling helped solve the former issue, since campaigns targeted to specific audiences or geographies require smaller overall budgets. But the latter problem remained.
“These companies are used to buying on Google, Amazon, Meta, and other OTT services, but they’re not used to our go-to-market structure,” said Colombo. “So that became our focus – making it easier for them to buy with us.”
Redesigning internal processes
Catering to those kinds of advertisers means offering a simple, user-friendly user interface. SMEs want to be able to quickly enter their budgets, the dates they want to run, and their targeting parameters, and to see a projection of how much of their audience they’ll be able to reach, before booking.
Targeting is all powered by Mediaset’s first-party data, and advertisers are able to target based on geo, gender, and interest groups offered by the broadcaster. In its early days, geo has proven to be the most popular targeting type. Colombo says this mirrors the early days of when the Lanner format launched, suggesting things may change further down the line. “In the first year, I think 80 percent was geo targeting, now it’s around 20 percent,” she said. “I think as companies are spending more, they’re refining their targeting. So they might be geo targeting but then adding interest. And a lot are retargeting based on linear spots, or running exclusions to drive incremental reach.”
The UX is just one part of the equation – the back end of the business needs to be set up to facilitate these kinds of fast-paced transactions, and that’s not how broadcasters typically work.
“It’s mostly been about redesigning our internal processes,” said Colombo. “There has been a lot of bureaucracy in the past, and we had to make it so that what used to take a few days now takes five minutes. Redesigning all of our internal processes took almost a year of work.”
This work has wider benefits for the company. Commercial accounts use a more complex version of the same platform internally to create proposals for clients, so as processes have become quicker and more flexible, this has knock-on effects for larger clients too.
Another part of the equation has been properly communicating the offering’s value proposition to prospective clients. The CTA button and ability to click-through for more information could lead some to focus on these aspects of the format, but doing so would miss the point.
“We’re not stressing the interactive piece, because the big impact is really the exposure you get with these ads,” said Colombo. “We run a lot of attribution modelling on our bigger clients who have used these ads, and we can see that even when people don’t interact with the ad, they then search for the name of the company, or they go directly to their website. So what we talk about is the impact you get from the attention of the consumer, because you reach them while they’re watching content.”
Keeping level headed
While the response so far from advertisers has been very positive, Colombo emphasised that it’s still early days. “There’s been a lot of interest, and we’re starting to convert our leads, the coming months will be a great test and a steep learning curve for us,” she said. “But it’s definitely been good to see the affection that people have for TV as a medium, they’re so enthusiastic. We are also focusing on reporting which we are making more and more detailed, but at the same time straightforward for these new businesses to access actionable insights for further activities.”
The inquiry form for Mediaset AdManager asks potential clients about their motivation, and their responses have been telling. “In some cases, it’s very aspirational, so that’s really nice to see,” Colombo said. “We share their ambition, we want to help them drive their business, as we have been doing with bigger companies for years.”
While MFE Advertising isn’t getting carried away with early leads collected in the Italian market, the international media company is also keeping pragmatic about the size of the SME opportunity. “We have heard all sorts of estimates on the potential of this platform,” said Colombo. “For sure, there is a big market. Looking across countries, there are around five million SMEs in Italy, and 3.5 million in Spain, so there’s a lot of potential. It will take a while, however we estimate it will represent a material percentage of our turnover in the next three years.”
But as the product gains traction, MFE Advertising has plenty of thoughts on how the product could expand.
“I think we’ll definitely grow by adding new formats,” said Colombo. “We’re on TV, so of course video ads are on the roadmap. Website, mobile and digital audio might also be interesting for small and medium businesses, not to mention digital out of home as well. Then of course there’s cross-country expansion. We’re looking at Spain as the next country, while we’re in talks with other broadcasters as well.”