In this week’s Week in Charts, streaming piracy costs UK £1.4 billion, Disney+ sees major ads tier boost, and audiences ignore unskippable ads.
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Sky Partnership Hands Disney+ Major UK Reach Boost
Disney+’s total UK household reach grew by around 1.1 million between Q1 and Q2 this year, according to Barb’s quarterly Establishment survey, which measures the total UK household reach of the major subscription streaming services. And a large number of these new subscriptions opted for Disney’s ad-supported tier, with over 700,000 households signing up to the service. This provided a nearly 30 percent boost to the total UK household reach of Disney’s ad offering.
Barb’s head of insights Doug Whelpdale attributed this growth to a partnership with Sky, which made Disney+ with ads eligible to be added to certain Sky packages at no extra cost.
Consumers Care More Than Marketers About Quality of AI Content
While EMEA audiences certainly have mixed feelings about brands who advertise next to AI-generated content, their attitudes to AI-adjacent ads are significantly swayed by how well they rate the content in question. Forty-two percent of those surveyed for DoubleVerify’s ‘Media Quality in the Age of AI, EMEA’ report said they would feel negatively about a brand that advertised next to low-quality content. But that figure drops to 27 percent if consumers see the content as high-quality.
Marketers take a different approach. Forty-six percent said they would be either somewhat or very concerned about serving their ads next to low-quality AI-generated content. And this figure only shifts marginally to 43 percent for high-quality material.
Unskippable Ads Are Far From Unmissable
When faced with unskippable video ads, millennials are the most likely demographic in the UK to politely sit and watch the ad break, according to consumer research from market research business Attest. But even for that age bracket, the majority will either direct their attention elsewhere, mute the sound, or stop watching altogether.
Boomers, meanwhile, have the least patience in this regard. They’re the least likely to continue paying attention while ads run, and the most likely to stop watching altogether.
UK Businesses Feel At The Mercy of Tech Giants
Nearly two-thirds of UK companies say they’ve paid fees to a large digital platform because they’ve felt they have no realistic choice but to accept, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research’s ‘Bottleneck Britain’ report. Meanwhile almost half say they’ve had to change how their business works because a tech giant’s rules have required it.
In the digital advertising space, the Silicon Valley giants often set the ground rules, which many British businesses feel they’re forced to comply with. And the IPPR’s report recommended that more forceful application of existing laws regulating digital markets in the UK would deliver significant economic growth.
The Week in Stocks
Agencies
Omnicom’s share price fell by over five percent last week, following the news that major client PepsiCo has consolidated global media duties with rival holding company Publicis — reportedly without running a formal pitch process.
TV
European broadcasters RTL, Canal+, and Viaplay were the only risers in an otherwise negative week for the TV sector. Fellow European TV groups ProSiebenSat.1 and MediaForEurope, however, were this week’s biggest fallers.
Publishers
There were falls across the board for publishers over the past week, with Future Plc down by close to six percent. Future’s share price has fallen by a third over the past six months, though it’s been fairly stable since the start of the summer as investors look for signs of whether its Google Zero strategy can fuel a turnaround.
Ad Tech
The Trade Desk was up by over five percent, as markets seemed to react somewhat positively to the news that the company is laying off around 15 percent of its global staff. This was too late to prevent the demand-side platform from dropping out of the S&P 500, however.
Tech
Meta’s share price shot up by close to eight percent this week, in the wake of the news it has reached an $18 billion settlement to resolve a lawsuit accusing it of harming children through addictive design. Meta has since gone on the offensive, calling for other social platforms to implement the same design changes it has agreed to as part of the settlement.
