ISBA: ‘Advertising on the BBC could hurt the industry in the long-term’
ISBA’s director of media and advertising, Bob Wootton, has responded to the debate surrounding the future of the BBC, saying the introduction of advertising could hurt the industry in the long term.
Wootton’s comments came following a recent poll conducted by ad-tech firm TubeMogul, which suggested as many as 60 per cent of Brits could be open to an ad-funded BBC. Published ahead of the BBC’s most comprehensive review of its funding-model, statistics such as this will inevitably pique the interest of advertisers.
However, Wootton warned that while “quite a few would love to share the National Lottery access of BBC1’s primetime audiences” the consequences could be far reaching.
“Everyone should consider carefully the impacts on the whole broadcast ecology,” he said. “If advertising spend did not rise in line with supply of audience, funds available for world-class content creation would inevitably – if gradually – be compromised to industry’s collective disadvantage.”
Overall, UK ad spend is predicted to increase 5.4 per cent to £15.8bn this year, predominantly driven by a rise in digital advertising. Wootton said despite these year-on-year increases, a marketer's spend is still finite and the BBC will attract at the expense of existing channels.
So how does the BBC begin to modernise itself? “This is a subject that is rightly going to draw a lot of comment and command a lot of ‘column inches’ in the next few months. Probably a shedload of misinformation too, not least from the Corporation itself. An orderly evolution of the status quo is what’s needed,” Wootton continued.
The licence fee or another universal tax is going to be necessary for a while yet, according to Wotton, but could morph practically to a household charge.
“However, differential charging in line with household earnings would make it seem more of a tax than a fee, so decriminalisation of non-payment would have to be revisited,” he added.
As for the murmurs that a Netflix or Spotify-style subscription model could be a feasible alternative to the blanket licence fee, Wootton said quite simply “UK broadband infrastructure won’t support it for broadcast TV”.
But, ongoing investments mean it is on the horizon and so provision needs to be made for another Charter review in less than ten years.