In Europe, the OTT market is reaching a pivotal point this year. The whole industry is expected to weigh EUR 39 billion in 2024, and video advertising is the growth motor of the sector. By 2025, advertising revenues will represent over 40% of the market in value, a 4.5-point increase compared to 2023. With Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video’s ad-tiers now launched on the Old Continent, and local broadcasters shifting to second gear on their OTT strategies, everyone seems to be rushing towards digital advertising as a key revenue driver in 2024. Expanding ad inventories on digital video: what are the cheat codes that will further scale the video ad market? The largest market for digital advertising in the region is by far the UK, where digital ADEX surpassed traditional media ad expenditures back in 2016 already. Ad revenues on OTT platforms in the country are expected to pass the EUR 6 billion bar this year, well ahead of its neighbouring markets; and advertising revenues will account for more than half of the whole digital video market by the end of the year. On top of being one of the largest consumer markets in Europe, the significant lead taken in the UK can be explained by several factors. Local actors have implemented ambitious initiatives quite early on in the digital video segment, like the rebranding of the country’s largest commercial broadcaster OTT service ITV Hub into ITVX back in 2022. In other parts of the continent, broadcasters are just taking this step in 2024, notably TF1’s recent launch of TF1+, rapidly followed by M6’s launch of M6+ in France. Ad buyers in the British market are also more familiar and keen to navigate between CTV advertising, addressable TV, and targetable OTT inventories thanks to an early adoption of services like Sky Adsmart and widely circulated documentation on the advantages of targeted ads on the big screen. Conversely, the slower take-up of premium video advertising in other European markets can be explained by the prevalence of free-to-air TV viewing with linear channels retaining a large proportion of advertising budgets. Digital ad inventories are also generally less accessible than in the UK. According to IAB figures, programmatic represented over 80% of ad buying in the UK in 2022, compared to just around 40% in Germany and Spain, and even less than 30% in Italy. But a growing number of publishers have launched platforms directed at buyers and agencies to automatize ad sales through programmatic, following the path of ITV’s Planet V and Channel 4’s 4sales, like RTL AdConnect or France TV’s programmatic.tv. With ad sales being still encased within each national publisher’s scope, and direct sales remaining the main access to ad...
