No, It’s Not Your Eyes – It’s The Ads
February 10, 2012
By Tom Mountford | No Comments
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Are TV Commercials HD? It’s Not Your Eyes – It’s The Ads.
This morning I spotted an article on AdWeek.com regarding the broadcasting of standard-definition advertising between HD programmes in the USA. ‘If you own a television and take an interest in big-time sports, chances are you’re intimately familiar with the Geico brand. From October 2010 to September 2011, the insurance provider invested $158.1 million advertising in televised sports, making it the sixth biggest spender in the space. And yet despite the magnitude of Geico’s TV budget, none of its spots were produced in high-def. When the ads run in native HD programming, they’re letter-boxed, bracketed by a pair of vertical bars. For another, the picture quality isn’t as sharp as the surrounding HD content.’
I entirely sympathise with the American situation – here in the UK we supply all advertising to standard-definition channels in 625-line PAL format, a technical standard that hasn’t changed since the late 1960s. Standard-definition via digital services such as Sky+ and Freeview usually provides DVD quality video, and it looks fine on smaller-screens and traditional CRT televisions. However, when it gets ‘up-rezzed’ (is there yet a standard spelling for this new term?) by HD displays the image quality degrades quite badly – and this is most noticeable on larger screens. Of course, supply a 42″ LED screen with a 1080p HD signal and it looks great – however, just like the USA all our advertising is still supplied to broadcasters, be they SD or HD, in 625-line format (also know and 576i). According to AdWeek’s article, ‘digital media-services company DG estimates that only 16 percent of all television advertising [in USA] is aired in HD.’ They extracted return-path data from 100,000 set-top boxes and found that more viewers stuck with an HD commercial than a regular old standard-def equivalent. In my opinion there are lots of variables at play, and in a country as large as America a research base of 100,000 viewers can’t really be said to be conclusive evidence. That said, the statistics did surprise me – retention for HD ads was said to be 18% higher than ones broadcast in SD, and the lift was as much as 28% when the HD ad was first in the break. The lift was even more evident with drinks and QSR brands (Quick Service Restaurant) such as McDonald’s and KFC, presumably because the higher resolution makes their products look more appealing, where the ads benefitted from a 33% boost. If anyone is still skeptical, DG also did audience research – nearly 50% of people surveyed said they could easily spot the difference between SD and HD content.
For many years America was a long way behind the UK in terms of television standards, their 525-line NTSC system was widely regarded as pretty awful. However approximately 82% of the programming now broadcast in the USA is offered in HD, with 70% percent of cable TV also delivered in the format. Mike Caprio, the Senior VP at DG said, “You’re spending millions of dollars on media, millions on creative, hundreds of thousands on production, and then at the point where the customer will see all that work and all that investment… you’re essentially turning them away. The advertising business hasn’t been as progressive as it should be in addressing the issue.”
For the time-being both the USA and UK continue to juggle a mixture of NTSC, PAL, 720p, 1080p and 1080i sources and best match them to common standards for SD and HD delivery chains. On this side of the Atlantic there is currently no requirement for production companies to supply commercials to broadcasters in HD – even for entirely HD services. This is especially a shame as we’ve been producing many of our commercials in HD for several years – but convert them down to standard-def for delivery and transmission. The delay in seeing hi-def commercial breaks is two-fold, firstly ITV’s regions still have a standard-definition infrastructure which prevents them running local services in parallel SD and HD offerings. Secondly, many advertisers are still running campaigns that were produced before HD was widespread (the ones that get dusted off and brought out at Christmas for example). We’re keen to begin delivering in HD, it’s no problem for us to do so, but will likely only be doing so when the scales tip towards HD being the most prevalent broadcasting format. Fingers crossed it shouldn’t be long now – what the research does conclusively prove is that viewers notice the difference, and the appreciate it.