Latest / Unharnessed / Free TV Ads in Under a Minute: How ITV Is Democratizing TV with GenAI
Transcript
- Moffie: welcome to another episode of Unharnessed. I'm Jonathan Moffey. We got our co-host Joe Hirsch. And today joseph hirsch: Hey guys, Joe Hersh here. Moffie: we have our first international guest, Jason Spencer from ITV. Welcome, Jason. How you doing? Jason Spencer: Very good. Thank you for having me. So Moffie: Great to have you. All right. So just tell us more about what I T V is for folks who don't know in the US and are ignorant of things across the pond. let's start there. Jason Spencer: Okay, right. Well, actually, the thing you might associate with ITV if you're listening to this from the US is Love Island. because Love Island is an ITV show, big in the UK and across multiple territories. I know it's massive in the US at the moment. It's I think comes through ITV Studios, to my knowledge. So ITV is a broadcaster, streamer, and producer. We're really big internationally on the studio side. We own loads of different production companies, make shows for Domestic broadcasts as well as global streamers. And the bit I work on is the UK ARM, which is our linear broadcast channels and streaming, streaming through ITVX. We're the biggest broadcasting streamer platform in the UK for commercial. And my job is business development director. I run all of our commercial teams across the UK outside London and work on a lot of commercial projects for. Small brands, which is how we got to know each other. Moffie: But you did mention Love Island and my brain works in mysterious ways. Has Love Island or do you know has Love Island like used Gen AI in any capacity? Jason Spencer: well you mean artificial enhancements? Absolutely not. I think it's no, it's to my knowledge, no. I mean it's gone through waves, it's still hugely successful here in the UK and it's traveled around the world. but I don't believe it uses AI in any way, shape, or form. It's genuinely real. joseph hirsch: I have a more pressing question. Is it super intelligence in the UK or is it artificial intelligence? Because we've recently changed the name here and I just need to know has it made it across the pond. Jason Spencer: we're not quite at the super stage yet. There's a lot of talking. I've joseph hirsch: Ugh. Jason Spencer: started I've started seeing it on people's LinkedIn. I think there's someone who you work with, Jonathan, who's kind of put AI to SI. so I think we're still at the AI stage. but you know, we aspire to be super like your good selves. joseph hirsch: I'm thinking about, I don't know, updating my domain name. You know, I feel bad for all the other people out there that chose .ai domain names because we now have to get .si domain names. That's gonna be my first move just to kind of stay relevant. But I think it's important to talk to everyone on the pod about how they're transitioning to SI. Jason Spencer: I I think listen, it's just words. I mean, a degree of humility goes a long way. I think just treat the A as augmented or additional and I think it covers a myriad of things. And you won't have to worry about what letter you've got. Does that help? joseph hirsch: All right, so now that I feel like I've learned quite a bit in a very short period, now that we've got that out of the way, I think it's probably Jason Spencer: Yeah. joseph hirsch: imperative that we learn about what ITV is doing with SI. Jason Spencer: with SI. Well, that that that isn't the direction I thought this was going in. But we we listen, we use we're using AI in a number of different ways across our business to help people day to day in their jobs, and just just ease the process, you know, free people up to do the things that require high-level thinking and higher level thinking time. I think the thing I that that in my area that we've done most Effectively, I think over the last two years from a commercial perspective is through Gen AI Creative Production. And I think it kind of started off in a pl in a place very different to working with Streamer. but it's kind of really accelerated over the last year working with Jonathan, the team, initially a streamer.ai, and then and then through Magnite. And if I just give you a little bit of a flavor about what why are we doing that? You know, because you might say, look, what, you you're a creative business, you know, you're doing lots of amazing programs, there's a lot of kind of crafted solutions there. But we work with thousands of advertisers every year. And it it works in a spectrum from the very big market leaders to those taking their first step on TV, those SMBs, those businesses who might have built themselves on search and social and think going on TV is kind of out of the realm of possibility. And for us, what Gen AI Creative Productions done. is it's just level the playing field. It's just democratized everything to enable any brand to go on TV, to enable any brand to compete with a market leader in terms of being in that same environment with a TV ad, and also to enable any of our sales team to make ads for brands. And that is not to reduce the quality of the advertising. It's very much horses for courses. You know, if you want to make an award winning ad, great. you can go and hire a creative agency and do that. But if you want to test the water on TV, we can now help you do that and we can do it absolutely free and we can do it near instantly. And so you might call that SI. I just call it well, I'll call it whatever you want it to. Moffie: So let's let's talk about version one once you're getting started. You know, Jason Spencer: Yeah. Moffie: what was the approach to start attracting SMEs to TV? Jason Spencer: Yeah. Yeah, so the version one before you guys, because we were sort of if you think back to two and a half years ago, right? I don't know what you two were doing exactly two and a half years ago in the space of AI, but but we we just sort of thought actually there's something kind of interesting in here. And ITV is a big company and we'll just talk about maybe a bit about how we've managed that i i in in a bit around the governance side. But we got a bunch of people together, including Alan, who you've met, Moffe, Alan Hall. And we got people together across the organization and just gave them the time to just play around and see what we could do. And just gave them the tools to do that. And that enabled us to see what the art of the possible could look like. We built a business case to get funding for the enterprise licenses. And then we invested in about three or four enterprise licenses over a period of time. And our hypothesis was that we could make ads for new to TV advertisers that would be as good as. The category averages for creative effectiveness for ads that were being made for market leaders. So we worked with a company called System One, who I think are big in the US as well, and they helped us to measure that. And lo and behold, we were able to make ads for a single furniture store in Northern Ireland and for a South Wales travel agent. And if you look at the version ones of what we did, they're pretty good, but they're kind of CGI-like. And it took probably about 10 hours to make an ad that would have cost. six figures and taking a about two or three weeks. you know, if you were making it in the in the pre-Gen AI way. And we were quite proud of it. But the problem was, even though we were doing this for nothing, is it was really difficult to scale because we didn't have more resource to do this. And there were some restrictions around what you could do beyond CGI at that stage. So I just think the technology was quite limited. And enterprise licenses are great for protecting you. But what happens is the capability of each individual software just goes at different paces. And before you know it, you're tied in something for a year and then something better's come along and all your money's tied in there. So that was kind of when we realised scaling was the difficult thing to do. And that's where you guys came in, I guess. It's all about to Moffie: Yeah, you said two and a half years ago. That was roughly it's a little bit longer than that, but that's like when we started the company. And the idea was Jason Spencer: We started streaming, yeah. Moffie: to pull these different tools together, whether it's Chat GPT to write the script. At that time, it was just mid-journey for either generating images or we would, you know, scrape images from Google search and then music as well and kind of pull it all together. at that time there really wasn't even image to video models that are as good as they are today. So we just wanted to make it super easy. You just put your business name Jason Spencer: yeah. Moffie: in or website URL and you're off to the races. but yeah. Jason Spencer: I think that was probably when you came and presented to a senior management team. That was one of the best kind of five minute pitches I think we'd ever seen. Because it was just pick a company, let's put it in, let's make an ad. You know, we talk about being vulnerable. That was a that was a proper test of what was possible. And I think what really appealed, I think there was a phrase you used early on, which was that you were creating essentially an AI DJ. You could spin it. And you could find whatever you wanted to solve the problem and make an ad within about a minute. So I think that that that really appealed in terms of being able to find the right tools for the job rather than say these are the tools that we've signed up to. Make sense? Moffie: Yeah. Yeah, tell us more though about I like that and I like hearing that we had a great pitch, but obviously some of the issues were you could get a nice kind of shell of a creative quickly, but then to get closer to T V quality, tell us more about Alan's team and ITV and really the Jason Spencer: Yeah. Moffie: post production to really make sure it's T V ready. Jason Spencer: Yeah, so I guess to put it in context, we've got a team of creative producers led by Alan. and we're making a thousand ads a year for about two hundred new to TV advertisers up to the point where you guys came on board. And we knew that in order to be able to make ads with you alongside that had to be additive. It's not a replacement, so it kind of freed up the time. So the first thing is making sure the ads are compliant. So what was really good was we gave you the BCAP code as code. You integrate it into the platform. So that just meant that every time an ad's being made, you're able to do something which enabled us to say, is this ad compliant? Now it still has to go through the clear cast process, which is a probably a more stringent process of approval for what can go on TV. He says with a with a wry smile, in the UK. But I think it's a healthy friction. But it was enabled to say this ad is good to go or not. And then that just gave us the confidence. and then I think there's a balance between all ads looking the same because understandably they are kind of semi-templated and giving enough variation on voices, music, the format for them, and a degree of craft from Alan, because I think we always saw this as, and his team, we all saw this as a balance between quality control and speed of production. So being able to make an ad in under a minute was hugely appealing. but I think even if we compare the first ads we made with you a year ago to what we're making now, it's light and day, isn't it? I think you Moffie: Yep. Jason Spencer: know it really is. It's a real and that's a combination of the technology capabilities, your updating of the platform, but also I guess the confidence in our team and the sort of skill to kind of finesse it and add those whistles and bells around the edges. Moffie: Yeah, the models have gotten wildly better. and basically things like text on screen and logos looked horrible just a year ago, and now the models can render text on screen and logos without really any effort. so we've seen just kind of a step function change in the creative output of these tools. Jason Spencer: And I guess also it's really intuitive. I you know, to use a a a a an example, the very fact that someone like me, who is both not creative and not technically skilled, was able to make ads, edit them and also kind of present that in public on stages and to clients, is I guess testament to how intuitive it was. so Moffie: Yeah, exactly. I think I think really what's kind of the only if there's any modes left, I don't know there's any modes left in any businesses or a GENTIC at all. it's really making things drastically easier and intuitive, because the models themselves are so good, the differentiator is actually getting adoption and getting people to come back because it was a delightful experience. Jason Spencer: Yeah, that that said, we might come on might we might come onto it, but I think we were reluctant, I guess still are, to just hand it over as a self served platform to advertisers and agencies. and that is a combination of I think we've just found a concierge approach is the right balance. It's really light touch mouth side, but it has enough skill and craft in the prompt, in the updates, to just make sure that whatever someone sees kind of surprises and delights them. And I think, you we talked in the early stages, we were contemplating a sort of self-serve platform. I think if you're a busy business owner, you know, you get one chance to impress. And even if you've made an ad for social, you have an idea in your mind of what it's gonna look like for TV. So we just wanted to make sure that first experience was of the right standard. So that's why we've gone down this concierge approach to date. Moffie: Yeah, 100%. And also knowing that it's much easier to build, and that's kind of less of the limiting factor, more of it really is customer acquisition. So when you're thinking about self-serve, like how are you thinking about actually getting the SMEs into the top of the funnel in the first place? Jason Spencer: That was very good question. I mean, it's a it's a it it's a combination of you know the focus of the team, you know, going looking to target SMEs is a key part of our strategy, but it's alongside what we do with agencies, big and small. but it's about just being smart about who we talk to. What it just means is that whether we're going after a category or whether we're thinking about how we go and market to a particular audience, we have got the ability to overcome the key Perception barriers from the off. You know, and those perception barriers are I can't afford it because the media's too expensive. The creative is going to be astronomical. It's inaccessible because I haven't got time to do TV planning and buying. And it's not accountable. It's not going to drive the measurement outcomes that I need it to. And if we've got something that can instantly overcome those barriers, particularly the creative barrier, we've found it just makes. that go away instantly. And then it's a combination of how much do I need to spend? What's that going to achieve? So I think that's been really, really key to just overcome those initial barriers. I mean, really to do this properly, you need big marketing budgets, you big big promotional budgets. We have been doing some activity on ITBX to try and attract pause ad advertisers through self promotion. And that's been successful. But I think it's about how we scale it further going forward. Moffie: Awesome. Like what type of advertisers are actually trying pause ads and why do you think pause ads they've been kind Jason Spencer: It's Moffie: of in and out of vogue, but why do you think they're back? Jason Spencer: Yeah, it's well it it's interesting. I I don't know what it's like in the US, but on in the UK, you know, they're ubiquitous now, whether it be on the streaming platforms of the main broadcasters or on the kind of Netflix's, prime video, et cetera. And they're they're just dead simple. and it just means that anyone who's advertising on static ads, prints, outdoor or banners can turn that into a TV ad. And so it's just basically reduced that barrier to entry once more. We've found that pause ads actually are the most accessible and attractive of the formats that we've created with you. And we can create them in under a minute. All right. And we've got repeat customers now. You know, we've got race courses who are running events on weekends when they don't have horse meets, and they are they are coming back again and again. Because it's worked really well for them, it's really, really effective as as we've seen. so what we've found is pause ads really bring in people as a starting point and then we migrate them onto thirty second ads. And Moffie: Yeah. Jason Spencer: having a range of different formats just helps us to be all things to all people. Moffie: So let's double click into that. I think there's an interesting thing going on. The thesis was if you could get rid of what we found for SMEs, the biggest barrier, and I'm saying SMEs, it's SMEs across the pond, not SMBs like in the US, but we're talking about the same thing. was Jason Spencer: Yeah. We can Yeah. Moffie: kind of creative friction, both the cost and the time it takes. So you get rid of that and you have a much better way to get more advertisers into the pipeline. But then once you have all these new advertisers actually showing them ROI or outcomes, obviously is the critical way to get them retained. So tell us more like what did the racetrack was it racetrack or horse horse racing? Jason Spencer: It was like a it was it was it was a race course, Salisbury race course who've run who run lots of different kind of special nights when there isn't a horse racing meeting going on. It's just a way to sort of monetize and you know, listen, we're not measuring every single campaign we're working, but they're seeing massive uplift and what they're also seeing is that this is a really simple way that they can track is effective for them. So we're doing a lot with advertisers now. We've really ramped up in the last four or five years to try and take on what the likes of Google and Meta have done effectively over the the over a long period of time. For us, it's about measuring short and medium term outcomes and making sure that we have a seat at the table to go and talk to CMOs, CFOs. where we're trying to get to as an industry, as a TV industry in the UK, because collaboration is really big in the UK. Is all of the broadcasters working together to create a single outcomes platform called Lantern to measure short and medium term outcomes for brands. So we're in the alpha stage, we're about to launch some results in the UK in the next month or so. But that really could be a game changer. We are doing hundreds of different outcomes models for brands every year, and we do a lot of forecasting as well for businesses. So they can come to us with a budget and we can tell them what that will achieve. before they've spent a penny. So that's just how we're trying to evolve from maybe the T V of old into this future facing, accountable T V, which I think is dead important. Moffie: Interesting. So how about one year out, we're in twenty twenty seven now. What's one Jason Spencer: Yeah. Moffie: thing that needs to be true about how these SMEs are buying TV that really gets them to another level of scale? Jason Spencer: Yeah, well I think I spent listen, there's two ways to answer this. I think one of the interesting things that's happening in the UK, again, it's another good example of the broadcasters working together. It's something called SME Marketplace. Now in the US, you may have heard of Universe Lads. This is basically Comcast, the people behind Universe Lads who have helped to power this in the UK. So it's ITV Channel 4 and Sky with the VOD inventory through their streaming platforms. And what we're doing is we are In the in the foothills of looking at what we can do to enable SMEs to basically come in and plan and buy a whole campaign from end to end and transact in it as well as do the creative. That has just started in the UK. So in a year's time, I would like to think that is then starting to accelerate. So you've got that. From an ITV perspective, I think really it's a matter of us scaling up what we've done today. As you know, we've got 16 advertisers now. who have used streamer, the streamer platform and either run those ads on TV with ITV or been inspired by that and then upgraded to something which is a paid option, I would like to see that massively scale up and use that as a really strong lever to drive growth. You know, another think of what we've achieved in one year. You know, if you think about a hockey stick, wow, you know, in another year this will be miles ahead. Moffie: Love it. so what's next for the product in twenty twenty seven? Jason Spencer: Well, we've got the a as as you know, we've we've done pause ads and thirty second ads, which are really successful. The one we're really trying to scale up at the moment is one that has got the rather uncatchy name. So if if you can think of something a bit catchier, I'm very much up for it, which is a kind of social video to YouTube opportunity. ITV has got a YouTube platform where we sell advertising into it, but there is there's there's less stringent compliance in terms of the ads that can run there for non Sensitive categories. So what we'd love to do is help brands to use their social video content and make that work harder. I think what's really interesting about this is everything we've talked about up to this point has been for SMEs. What this opportunity gives is any brand. You could be a major multi-million pound advertiser. You're just not sure how that you can monetize your social video. We'll come and make that happen, working in tandem with advertiser, media agency, creative agency. And remember, this is a free service. We want to see if this can help to scale when I say free service on the creative side, help them to scale and get more out of that. So anyone listens to this, if you want to come and talk to us about that, that'd be great. There's also some really exciting stuff we've been trying to experiment with behind the scenes with with your team, which is really about how we can scale up creative so we can do multiple iterations. So you take an existing ad and really scale it. So you can do if you've got 50 different locations. Let's make 50 ads simultaneously. And between your team and ours, we are trying to solve that problem. So what I love is the way that we don't just come to you and say, Make this happen. We come to you and say, let's work together to make this happen. Your team and ours are working sort of symbiotically on that. So that's Moffie: No, that's great. Jason Spencer: kind of where it's coming next. Moffie: Any anything else you want to leave us with? Jason Spencer: Well, I let me let me leave I'm gonna leave you with a quote, because I love I love a quote. If in doubt, go and get inspiration elsewhere. But you know, for me, you know, there's stuff that ITV's doing, there's stuff that you guys are doing, there's stuff that our competitors in the UK are doing, and we're all trying to solve the same problem. All right. And, you know, sometimes it feels like a race. Who can get there first? Who can get the kind of bragging rights? But there's a great African proverb that that I've been using a lot. in in the market over here. And that is that if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go further, go together. So from my point, if we go as an industry together, we will solve that SMB issue. If we partner with people who've got the same ambition to solve this problem, which we have with you guys, we will get a lot further. Moffie: That's great, Jason. Great to have you. This has been another episode of Unharnessed. we really appreciate your time. Jason Spencer: Thank you very much.