Brands in China are facing a shortage of video inventory because of rating declines on TV, says report

Meanwhile, for online TV, more viewers are embracing membership-based services in order to skip over advertising, because the clutter of ads has risen by 72% since 2013.

This is according to the fourth edition of Transcend, OMD China’s annual predictions on media trends shaping China advertising landscape.

“With the ever-changing landscape, increasing competition, the lack of data in certain sectors and further BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) consolidation, the challenges for marketers only continue to rise,” said Bhasker Jaiswal, managing partner of OMD China.

“Armed with the findings of Transcend 2018, our clients can start to address these challenges with stronger confidence and certainty, enabling them to future-proof their business for what lies ahead.”

The report also found that over-the-top spending grew by 160% in 2017, even though the OTT landscape in China is still very fragmented. This is due to the involvement of multiple stakeholders, which results in guesswork taking place from inventory prediction to tracking. The report predicts that this will continue over the next year.

For mobile stability, the report found that mobile app landscape is stabilising after an unpredictable year, with the top five video apps accounting for 95.7% of all video traffic. It predicts that traffic for apps like short videos, livestreaming, paid music and paid knowledge will continue to change and grow in the year ahead.

To tackle the shortage of video inventory, the report advise brands to ‘compete aggressively’ on the pricing front and diversify their buying strategies beyond popular programmes and primetime programmes, while brands should work production houses because of their content innovation and execution skills.

You can read the rest of the report here