France Télévisions piloting targeted advertising on DTT platform

French public broadcaster France Télévisions has teamed up with transmission services provider TDF to test responses to addressable advertising in the Le Mans area on digital-terrestrial TV.

Two of the pubcaster’s channels – flagship service France 2 and France 4 – will be able to offer advertising that is targeted at a geographic level.

The pilot, led by TDF, will enable the replacement of national advertising by local spots across all households that are equipped to receive digital-terrestrial TV transmissions.

France Télévisions’ advertising arm, France Télévisions Publicité, has teamed up with Thélem Assurances and its agency Havas for the test, replacing a national commercial with one only visible to inhabitants of Le Mans. Thélem Assurances’ network of agents does not cover the entire national territory and Romain Pouyau, head of media innovation at the group, said that targeted adverting could enable it to more granularly target its TV advertising activities, as is already done on other digital platforms.

The pilot will continue for the remainder of January and will subsequently be extended to the Bordeaux agglomeration.

TDF has been working on advanced advertising solutions for the last two years and has already begun work on targeting at individual household level, although this is not permitted as a commercial service under current regulations.

Marianne Siproudhis, CEO of France TV Publicité, said that “geographical targeting will enable a new set of advertisers to market on TV, and we hope that the regulations will soon allow this to be done at national level”.

TDF says that its trials have shown the ability of the DTT platform to play a role as channel evolved their advertising businesses towards targeting on the model of the internet.

Digital-terrestrial TV remains the primary distribution platform in France, used by 52.4% of main households and by 42% of main TVs in homes, according to the transmission services provider.

France Télévisions has already experimented with targeted advertising to multiple devices via its France 3 channel serving the country’s regions, but this is the first time targeted advertising has been trialled on DTT and on channels other than France 3.