Total TV effectiveness study finds 54% of profit driven by video

The stability of the 54% profit figure suggests that the shift from linear to fragmented digital platforms has not eroded the fundamental commercial value of the TV medium. For the streaming ecosystem, this validates SVOD and CTV as high-quality signals that complement rather than just cannibalize traditional linear reach. As brands like P&G move toward treating these channels as a single integrated system, the industry must shift away from siloed buying metrics toward unified cross-platform measurement. Watch for whether this data encourages a shift in budget allocation from social video toward premium CTV environments that mirror the linear viewing experience.

ISBA has spent years building the institutional case for unified TV measurement across fragmented platforms. The trade body's earlier Thinkbox-commissioned work on TV effectiveness laid the groundwork for treating linear, BVOD, and on-demand as a single planning category, and the new £100 million analysis extends that framework to include SVOD, CTV, and YouTube. Ebiquity's broader media effectiveness practice has been expanding its cross-channel attribution capabilities across UK and European advertiser accounts, positioning the firm as a neutral measurement layer between advertisers and platforms. The study's finding that profit contribution remains stable at 54% despite platform fragmentation gives advertisers a data-backed argument for maintaining or increasing total video budgets rather than shifting spend to social or retail media.

The competitive context for this research is intensifying. P&G, one of the world's largest advertisers, has been publicly pushing for cross-platform measurement standards that treat all video environments equally. ISBA's Infinity program has been working with UK broadcasters and platforms to establish common currency metrics for total video planning, directly addressing the measurement gaps that have historically made CTV and SVOD harder to justify in media plans. Meanwhile, Thinkbox's own research continues to show that TV advertising delivers the highest return on investment of any medium in the UK market, reinforcing the commercial case that ISBA and Ebiquity's data now supports with advertiser-level granularity. The convergence of these efforts suggests that UK advertisers are moving toward a consensus where total video is planned and measured as a single asset class.

On the technical measurement side, the challenge of attributing profit across linear, BVOD, SVOD, CTV, and YouTube simultaneously remains significant. Ebiquity has been developing proprietary econometric models that isolate the incremental contribution of each video platform within a unified framework, addressing the multi-touch attribution problem that has plagued cross-platform TV planning. The methodology behind the ISBA study likely relies on marketing mix modeling rather than last-click attribution, which aligns with the broader industry shift toward MMM as the preferred method for measuring long-term brand effectiveness across fragmented media. For streaming platforms competing for advertiser budgets, the implication is clear: environments that can demonstrate measurable profit contribution within a unified model will win share from those that cannot prove incremental value beyond reach.