Posts categorised: TV Advertising

Featured, TV Advertising /

Addressable TV, the outlook for UK broadcasters

The Americans are coming

Sometimes a new platform or craze lands and everyone scrambles around for information on how to monetize it or just how to jump on the band-wagon. It happened a few years ago with AR & VR, London was a buzz with startups looking to exploit the new tech. Now it’s happening again with advanced TV.

One of the first stages in a new phenomenon are the calls from our American cousins looking to partner with local London businesses to get their feet under the table early. At Toast, we’ve now had two such calls, American startups looking to expand into the UK market with platforms that are already up and running in the US. We’ve been doing our research into addressable TV in the UK, read on to see what we’ve found.

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Featured, TV Advertising /

Advertising Rules and Regulations

A big part of our job in TV advertising is clearing adverts to go on air. Mostly this is a straight-forward process of proving legal claims and making sure adverts are appropriate for the viewing public. Advertising rules and regulations in the UK are run by an organisation called Clearcast.

Clearing an ad full of orgasms

Sometimes things are a little more tricky. Below is the response we received to a rough-cut submitted to Clearcast -the UK TV Advertising clearing organisation. The advert was to be shown once on late night Channel 4 and was used to promote the Aids awareness charity – Frontline Aids (Formerly – International HIV/AIDS Alliance)

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Featured, News, TV Advertising /

Amazon has the power to dominate Addressable TV

We look to the future of Addressable TV and ask the question. “Are all the cards falling into place for Amazon?”

Back in the summer, TechCrunch ran an article about an Amazon job posting which was initially titled: “Head of Free to Air TV & Advertising.” After a bit of tweaking by Amazon, the job listing became: “Head of Prime Video Channels Free To Air TV & Advertising TV Partner Channels.” This job title clearly wasn’t going to fit on a business card so was changed to: “Head of Prime Video Partner Channels”.

Notice the omission of “free to air” in the final title? Are Amazon planning to launch a free ad funded version of Prime Video?

Addressable TV, the new Amazon store front?

Running ads on a free streaming version of Prime Video and knowing who is viewing the adverts. Plus having access to years of their most intimate buying habits, could be Amazon’s winning hand.

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Clutch Identifies Toast as a Leading Advertising & Video Production Agency in the UK

Toast is a talented team of video production and advertising specialists, dedicated to helping your business creatively stand out from your competitors. We specialise in branded content, television commercial production, television media buying, and motion graphics. We know what works to elevate your brand, and we’re not afraid to scare you a little if it will help your business succeed.

we deliver on clutch badge

These are the reasons we decided to join Clutch, an online platform whose mission is to identify the best B2B agencies and help them to be seen by buyers who need their services. Clutch publishes validated reviews from clients who have worked with the agencies listed on their site. The reviews, along with an internal evaluation of each company’s market presence, are what form their rankings and enable some companies to be listed above others.

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Featured, News, TV Advertising /

GDPR and Digital Advertising

GDPR and Digital Advertising, is GDPR the big shakeup that will change the world of targeted advertising?

A recent survey by W8 concluded that GDPR will make 75% of UK marketing data obsolete.

“Data” is a dirty word. We have all been probably, shocked and surprised by just how many companies have our information on their databases, as the flurry of “Don’t Leave Us” emails hit our inboxes. Many customers have a nagging feeling that there is something sinister about all this data mining that routinely takes place when we shop online. Companies have shared and made money from our data for years. GDPR if anything has forced business to look at the key relationship factor with their customers – TRUST.

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Brand Safety – Is your brand safe?

The Brand Safety issue is a big subject in the media right now and doesn’t look like it’s going away soon. For brands and organisations, it’s a reputational nightmare. You make some entertaining and informative video content and suddenly you get calls asking why your video is linked to or surrounded by other content that is extremist, offensive, pornographic, or at its simplest just contrary to your own brand’s ethics and values. For example, you are a family brand selling healthy cereal and you find yourself linked with a very explicit lyrics and imagery from the band Cradle Of Filth, famous for their songs that are violent, sexist, and overtly sexual. That’s a PR disaster that is none of your doing but the problem is you are now in damage limitation mode.

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Is it good advertising practice to bring talent in-house?

The dangers of bringing your agencies in-house.

I suppose there was a sense of schadenfreude amongst a lot of agencies when they watched the PR car car-crash that piled up around the Pepsi Kendall Jenner ad campaign. It was supposed to be an example of good advertising crafted by an in-house creative powerhouse.

In the driving seat that fateful day was Kristin Patrick, senior VP-global brand development. Mr Jakeman, President of PepsiCo Global Beverage Group had praised the ad on Twitter on Tuesday morning shortly after it was released, saying he was “super proud of the @PepsiCo #CreatorsLeague for producing this,” but the tweet has since been deleted. Another danger of deleting your soon-regretted statements of support is that news of your deletion also goes viral! Only adding to the sense of incompetence.

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Featured, TV Advertising /

Planning a brand video production

So, you have a great product or service. Maybe you’re a new-to-market challenger brand wanting to take on the big boys and win? You do your research and everyone in marketing with any intelligence is telling you to setup a brand video production. Because more people engage with brands and share video than any other form of content. If content is king, then video is God.

Video Production gear
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Challenger Brands, TV Advertising /

Challenger Brands – Staying the distance

You’re one of the new challenger brands, there’s a buzz building on social media, you may even be the next big thing in your sector. Three cheers for you!  But how do you capitalise on this initial interest and stay relevant for the long term? It’s a problem a lot of new brands have.  Gaining long term consumer trust and awareness.

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