Standardisation needed to measure VOD ad formats, says Walley

With various video on-demand (VOD) services available through set-top boxes, PCs, mobile phones, iPads and game consoles, Walley said the picture had become “incredibly patchy”. “You can’t stand still in this industry without someone trying to plug an ethernet cable into the back of you,” he said.

This messy situation has been driven from the supply-side, Walley argued, with different digital providers developing different ways to deliver and target content and ads.

“Consumers haven’t been demanding this bizarre, fragmented, crazy world,” he said. “Our community needs to be one of the voices saying to the TV industry that we can’t measure this stuff unless there’s some sort of standardisation. They have to simplify this world because it’s utterly bonkers right now – we can’t measure it or deliver insight from it unless there’s clarity around ad formats and technologies.”

Walley, whose agency specialises in media strategy, said research had the opportunity to drive the debate about the future of TV, but that there was “an amazing amount of ignorance” about the technology available. “The future is already here,” he told the audience. “You can buy it in Tesco.”