Following on the development of the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video (FWC) in North America, the FWC announced its European launch, extending its remit to champion the premium video industry on an international level. The FreeWheel Council for Premium Video Europe (FWCE) is an advocacy group consisting, at launch, of 13 members, including broadcasters and operators (Canal+ Régie, Channel 4, Discovery Networks International, Medialaan, MTG, Nelonen, Proximus, RTÉ, SBS Broadcasting, SFR Régie, Sky Media UK, Sky Media Germany and TF1 Publicité). It is committed to serving the shared interests of those in the premium video industry through leadership positions, research and advocacy to promote the premium video economy.
To mark the creation of the FWCE the group has published its first position paper, ‘Why Premium Video Matters for Advertisers: a European Perspective’. The paper represents the first collective output for the FWCE and is built on shared market-leading insights. It provides a definition of premium video and an overview of how it differentiates itself from the digital fray. (download here)
The key takeaways from the paper are:
- What sets premium video apart is its capacity to elicit engagement with both publisher content and the advertising that appears alongside it.
- All too often the industry is trying to measure premium video by the standards of other formats, pinning its worth on metrics like viewability alone, without recognising its potential to engage the consumer.
- In TV-like environments, brand-safety is assured and fraud is virtually non-existent and advertisers can reach real humans, engaged with content they have chosen to watch.
The living room TV remains the main viewing place for VOD.
