Transcription
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So absolutely delighted to welcome to this edition of the Business of Marketing podcast recorded live here at Advertising Week Europe, Helen from LG Ads. Helen, hi. Thank you. Hi. So tell us a little bit about your role and what LG Ads is all about.

Sure. So I am senior sales director at LG Ad Solutions Europe. And basically my role is to evangelize connected TV, help brands understand the advertising opportunity across connected TVs within Europe, and also all of the data opportunities that go alongside that with LG being the manufacturer of the TV. There's all sorts of data points, ACR data, usage data, viewership data, that can then make those advertising opportunities really exciting. So yeah, that's my role.

Wow, how exciting. So for those listening, give us a sense of the scale and reach of LG Ads.

Sure. So globally, we have access to 200 million LG TVs. And then within Europe, it's about 27 million within the EU5. So really a huge opportunity and kind of, yeah, wherever there is an LG TV, there is an advertising opportunity there throughout the world. So lots of opportunities scale wise.

Give us a bit of a rundown as to kind of what that opportunity looks like for brands.

So for brands, really at the moment, there's kind of two main formats or products:





CTV video, which is obviously what kind of most brands would think of when they think of CTV. And that's like usually a 30 second ad slot in between content. So just like a linear TV ad spot, except on LG TVs, it's running across free ad supported content, which is being consumed on the LG TV.



The home screen placement or other native placements, which are quite unique to LG as a TV manufacturer. And that's essentially the home screen is the very first screen that you see when you turn on an LG TV. And it's this huge video enabled placement at the top. And when people are kind of like thinking about what they're going to watch before they then settle into their kind of viewing experience.

So, yeah, they're the two kind of main products.

Amazing. And how long has the kind of service been operating?

So LG Electronics has obviously been around for a long, long time. But LG Ad Solutions, we launched in Europe about four years ago and based in London. And yeah, basically ever since then, it's been a bit of a wild ride. We're seeing huge growth. We've doubled in size over the last year. So, yeah, it's exciting.

So kind of startup style feel?

Yeah, it feels like a bit of a startup vibe, but with the backing of this kind of huge electronics company. So, yeah, it's great. Sounds like a great combination. It's good fun.

Yeah. And what is it about the proposition that you think is particularly unique in the market?

I think the big USP for working with LG as opposed to a lot of other connected TV kind of providers out there who are all our partners as well. Obviously, all of the streaming apps, for example, they're all our partners and our clients and they're accessible through the LG TV. But the big USP that we have is the data. And because we're the manufacturer, we have all of the viewership data on what people are watching on their LG TV.

So that's ACR data, which stands for automated content recognition data. And it essentially just picks up what people are watching on their LG TV. And then we also have WebOS, which is the operating system that runs inside the TV. So that has all of the app usage data as well. So kind of like what apps are installed and which apps are being opened, how many minutes are being spent inside. And then also like device data as well. So like, is this household a gamer? Do they have a PlayStation or an Xbox plugged in? What kind of games are they playing on there?

Yeah,it's interesting. Wow. And of course, that provides the brand and the media partners you have with the ability to target. Exactly, yeah. And target based on things like content consumption, so what kind of things people are watching, but also like ad exposures as well. So, I mean, the primary example is for incremental reach. Brands might want to exclude households that have already been exposed to their campaign on linear and then use the CTV opportunity as an incremental opportunity to find new audiences with that campaign. So yeah, there's loads of different use cases. And I'm going to get into that in a minute.

You just talked about sort of the fact that you have apps and streaming providers as partners. Give me a sense of that kind of broader, wider kind of LG ad solutions ecosystem. Like publishers, media buyers, agencies, the brands. Yeah, of course. I mean, as an OEM, we kind of find ourselves at the intersection of these three huge groups. There's obviously the brands or the advertiser, there's the content producer, and then there's the audience who are watching the TV. And yeah, LG kind of sits in the middle of all of those. And it's kind of a reciprocal relationship where each of those kind of actors depends on each other for content or for advertising or revenue, etc. So yeah, it's kind of interesting the big picture that we see of like how everyone has a different viewer journey when they turn on their TV. Some people like to do workouts on their TV. Some people like to watch S-Bod. And yeah, there's loads of different behaviors and having a view of all of that is really interesting.

And how do you like to work with all of those actors in that sort of ecosystem? In different ways, depending on who that actor is. Obviously, kind of with agencies and brands, we're really talking about the advertising opportunities and kind of how we can get really creative there. And then with the kind of streaming app partners, it's making sure that their app is prominent and really easily discoverable on the home screen. And there's so much data that we can do there with like their own advertising and then looking at the impact that that's had on app usage. So people then seeing an ad for their content and then kind of an increase in app installs or launches and minutes spent inside that app watching the content. And then obviously there's like the content studios as well. So because we've got LG channels, which is our owned and operated free ad supported app. And we also have a lot of content that we buy from content studios and service through that app in the way of fast channels and on demand content as well. So yeah, we've got all sorts going on.

And bring it to life for me. Tell me a little bit about some of the kind of campaigns that you're most kind of proud of, excited about. Yeah, so I think the home screen campaigns are really exciting to talk about because it's quite a unique format that's not necessarily very common elsewhere. It's the kind of first thing you see when you turn on your TV and we're getting really playful with like the creative executions. So for example, we've recently enabled 3D ads or kind of animated ads. And we had a really nice example with PlayStation. They launched their Astro Bot game and character. So we had kind of three different 3D variations of that Astro Bot basically like doing a little dance or like his cape rippling behind him and just really fun activations that are really going to catch people's eye when they turn on their TV. We did another one with IG Group, which is an investment platform and they were marketing their US stocks and they did it during the US election and the creative was amazing. It was this kind of like face, which was Kamala on one side and Trump on the other side. And obviously just like engaging with that political moment, the engagement that we saw on that campaign was crazy. So yeah, lots of exciting kind of examples.

And just picking up on your word there, engagement. Tell me a little bit about kind of the sort of the metrics and the impact that you're sort of seeing across the platform. Sure. So I think as ever, TV is the greatest brand builder.And I think the majority of the campaigns that we carry at the moment are the main KPI is still just reaching audiences, mass reach and brand awareness. They're super important. And we work with partners like Lucid to measure the impact of that campaign on branding metrics like recall, consideration, awareness, et cetera.

But obviously with all of the data opportunities as well, we really are starting to get lots more different campaigns with different objectives. So things like measuring site traffic as well, because you can kind of work with partners to look at how has someone who's seen an ad on an LG TV then taken an action and gone onto the site afterwards.

And obviously with the app partners, have people seen an ad for a piece of content or an exciting new TV series, and then they've gone and downloaded that app or launched that app to watch that series after seeing the advertisement. So there's loads of different kind of objectives really depending on the brand and who they are.

And how integrated into the rest of the mix is your solution? Are we talking kind of seamless kind of cross channel, omni channel? Yeah, I guess connected TV, video and home screen. We tend to run both formats for a lot of campaigns and that's because we've seen higher lift in branding metrics when you run both of them. So there's definitely lots of opportunity there.

And then I think if you look at kind of the wider funnel, for example, if you zoom out to think of all the other kinds of TV opportunities, TV advertising opportunities with the broadcasters and with linear TV, et cetera. I guess that's really where the data comes in. So again, back to incrementality, playing around with what is this brand advertising on linear? Do we want to be incremental to that activity? Do we want to actually build on that activity? Or for example, deep linking and add into YouTube to promote sponsored content that a brand might have in YouTube.

And there's really lots of different user journeys for an LG TV customer. And so, yeah, there is the kind of like opportunity to be collaborative across different kind of AV mixes or media mixes.

And where is this going? Tell me a little bit about sort of what's next? What trends and developments in the product are you most excited about? So I feel like at LG, there's a new product every week, which keeps it interesting. Certainly like lots to talk to brands about.

I think certainly we're seeing a big push on shoppable. So more people being able to shop products or certainly find out more about products directly from their TV. And something that's with through the use of things like QR codes, for example, that people can scan with their mobile.

But also I think we're really going to see that user journey change and become much easier, faster and more efficient. And LG is really going to be a huge part of that. So LG Electronics announced as part of their operating system WebOS that they're launching like a payment solution where you could essentially save your card details to your TV, which would then make buying products from your TV or ordering services so much easier and quicker through the click of a button. So that's really exciting for brands.

And tell me a little bit about the team. Obviously, this is in Europe is a relatively kind of new sort of evolution of the business. But how many in the team? How you structure the team? So, yeah, when I joined last year, there was nine people based in London working across Europe. And now there is 20. Wow. So, yeah, we're seeing huge growth. We've got loads of new faces. It feels like a little family, like it's really good fun.

And yeah, everyone's really excited to work together. And we're all kind of like very collaborative, which is important on a sales team because obviously sellers do work quite individually sometimes and have their own kind of targets. But it's a very kind of collaborative process. So, yeah, it's good fun.

And what sort of culture? We talked a little bit about sort of startup kind of withthe big power and support of LG. Tell me more about kind of the type of culture. What's it like to kind of work within LG ads? Sorry. I'm really distracted by the wrestlers in lycra walking past. Just another day at Advertising Week Europe. It's all going on at Ad Week. No, sorry, the culture in the LG office. It's really kind of like sharing examples, use cases, obviously having only launched in Europe so recently. There's a lot of kind of media firsts to be had and everyone wants a proof point.

So there's loads of examples across the team sharing who's done a really exciting activation around the Six Nations, for example. How can we talk about that and show that to the rest of our clients and get their imaginations going? And also being new in market, it's really about like being out in market a lot, at various events, parties, conferences, all sorts. And I think we're a loud bunch in that respect because we really need to be shouting about LG and ensuring that everyone knows who we are and how we're coming to market.

What sort of big shifts in behaviour are you seeing through the platform? How are consumers kind of evolving their consumption habits? There's been so much talk about binging and sort of tell me more about kind of what you're seeing from a data perspective, because you said you have such a rich array of data to draw from.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think everybody knows like connected TV usage is increasing year on year. It's now the majority. I mean, over three and four households have a smart TV connected to the internet. So it is the normal way of watching TV content. But there's no kind of like simple example of this household watch linear TV and this household purely streams and this household watches B-VOD, you know. Everyone does a bit of everything depending on what you want to watch and what kind of mood you're in. So it really is a mix. And that's what we always say to brands. It's so important to include SVOD and FAST and streaming and linear and kind of like account for that.

But certainly, you know, I talked about kind of payment systems and things like that. We've also just launched hubs, which is like from the home screen. You can go into different hubs:





Sports hub



Gaming hub



Music hub

We're seeing more and more people rely on the device itself. So the TV for all of these different behaviours. So, for example, for their workouts or for checking the score of their favourite team, which you can then feed into the TV. And as such, we've seen kind of HDMI usage decline as well. And as there's less and less need to plug in an additional device to kind of like add a capability to your TV, more and more that the TV is able to kind of support the consumer's needs.

Right. So like your point earlier about the sort of, you know, knowing when someone's plugged in a PlayStation, Xbox, the TV is kind of encroaching into kind of that category. So able to facilitate the actual gaming experience rather than a third party device. For sure. And like, I mean, I don't think PlayStations and Xboxes are going anywhere, but it's more of a seamless user journey. So, for example, you can jump into them from the gaming hub. There's also gaming apps that you are able to download directly onto your LG TV.

Yeah. That's really interesting. And tell me a little bit about your kind of perspective on second screening and, you know, like in the home, you know, certainly if you take my home as an example, it's not just second screening. Right. But tell me a little bit more about that dynamic.

Yeah, I think we all second screen. Our attention spans are so short these days. It's very common, obviously, to be like having a little look at your mobile while you're watching something on TV. And I think there's opportunities there as well. So, for example, with the ACR data that we have, we can do things like sequential messaging where we can reach people on their mobiles who have seen an ad on their LG TV. So there's definitely opportunities there. But it's very interesting looking at the research as well. So there's lots of things to consider with attentionpartners. Like we've been doing a bit of work with Lumen in the UK and looking at research of things like are people co-viewing? And looking at research of things like are people co-viewing, for example, because there's research to support that when people are watching a TV program together, they're far less likely to be second screening and looking at their mobile because watching a program has become a social experience that you're kind of sharing together. So, yeah, different kind of opportunities for brands to think about that as well. What time of day they're advertising, for example, all of these things kind of are a factor. Really interesting.

And how kind of targeted can I be? So my assumption is that you, you know, because you are the OEM, right? So give me a sense of kind of how targeted could I give me a kind of an example of the most targeted I could be using the LG ad solution? Well, it's funny because you get these briefs through which, you know, want to target 25 to 35 gamers with dogs. And there are so many data opportunities that quite often it is very possible to do that, especially with our third party data partnerships that we have as well. But it's always a question of scale. And because if you are going hyper, hyper targeted, you're obviously reducing the number of available households that you're able to reach with the campaign. And you're kind of then sacrificing reach and brand awareness and brand recognition or fame. So it's important to think about both. But certainly there's loads of opportunities there to target people based on their interests because we understand what kinds of content they're watching to the point where like some brands will have already done this research on their customers. And for example, what kind of programs they like to watch and we can actually build a custom segment based on a list of programs and people who've seen that content, for example, or, you know, app usage. Are they using fitness apps, for example, if we want to target a health and wellness audience? Yeah, there's a lot of different options.

Tell me a little bit about the sort of difference between your brands and advertisers that are kind of running campaigns versus those that are that you almost have a kind of an always on sort of style kind of relationship with because, you know, the TV is such a central kind of hub, right, to most people's world that that constant kind of front of mindness is kind of a key kind of opportunity, right, for some of your bigger, bigger brands.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it really varies. And the exciting thing about working at LG at the moment across general market, which is we it's kind of an internal term we use, but we have endemic advertisers who are more always on and they are the entertainment companies and the streaming app clients. See, when you switch on your TV, you're thinking, what am I going to watch? And seeing an advert for a new program is ideal. And it's a seamless user journey to then click into that platform and watch that content. But obviously, then there is loads of opportunities to market general market advertisers. So I'm thinking, you know, pharma and food and drink and travel. There's loads of different brands that we work with. And yeah, we have some really strong verticals for those as well. So for example, travel and automotive and luxury are three really key verticals for LG as well. Definitely kind of more on the affluent side, because the LG audience does tend to be quite affluent. They're not the cheapest TVs on the market. So it does tend to be people who are willing to invest a little bit more to get a really cool TV that fits their spec, whether that's a good TV for being a gamer or an OLED screen. Yeah, so it tends to be people who are willing to invest a little bit more in a quality product and our kind of advertiser portfolio really reflects that.

So I'm a marketeer and I'm listening to this conversation and I'm sort of thinking I want to kind of add kind of connected TVs into my media plan into my mix. Like what's your kind of advice on how I go about doing that? I mean, I think it's really kind of like meeting the vendors out there. So meet LG, meetSamsung, meet the fast partners and meet the S-VOD apps, you know, the giants Netflix and Disney. Have those conversations with everyone. I've seen the giants, Netflix and Disney, have those conversations with everyone and kind of understand all of the different kind of data opportunities for each partner, content opportunities. But really, I would say from kind of being the manufacturer itself, we really see those viewer journeys are so different and having a mix of partners is a really important thing to ensure that you're reaching people in different environments on their TV, as opposed to kind of like having a strategy with one partner and then really missing out on these audiences who, for example, are watching in ad-free environments.

So, I mean, 50% of all time spent on LG TVs is in ad-free environments. So that's where that home screen unit comes in really handy to reach those kind of audiences. So yeah, really kind of like understanding the different offerings and having a good CTV mix.

And the first step I should make in terms of my first campaign? First campaign, got to be with LG. Going to resist.

Yeah, we can get you a nice video and home screen cost device plan over.

Helen, thank you for your time today. No worries. Thanks very much.

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