The 2025 TV Key Facts by RTL AdAlliance, the international sales house of RTL Group, centres on the value of trusted media and local market specificities. While digital platforms account for around 76 per cent of advertising spend, framing the market solely by advertising channels can be misleading. A more insightful approach, highlighted by the TV Key Facts, is to evaluate advertising by the value it delivers in terms of reach, engagement and impact to advertisers. This perspective provides a clearer understanding of the role each advertising channel plays in driving business outcomes. Here, content media, encompassing media properties such as entertainment and information content, leads the way with 58 per cent of ad investment, of which streaming TV grows the most with 12.5 per cent year on year.

An analysis of leading global markets reveals that, behind global trends, market realities vary significantly. In China, for instance, retail holds a much greater share of the ad mix than TV – whereas in the other market studies, retail trails behind television.

For 66 per cent of Europeans, brands appearing in ads on TV for the first time make them feel or appear more trustworthy. TV is considered to provide the most credible media environment with the least amount of misinformation and highest level of authenticity. In fact, premium content such as legacy shows, classic shows originating from broadcast TV which are now also widely available for streaming, represent the majority of the Top 25 shows on global streaming services, with linear TV having a daily reach of 63 per cent in Europe, proving the power of mass media. The average daily TV viewing time in Europe remains high at 3 hours and 6 minutes, maintaining a gap of approximately one hour compared to the US (2 hours 19 minutes) and 1.5 hours compared to China (1 hour 32 minutes). The publication reveals that advertisers can leverage these premium contents and strong viewing times to increase their brand trust.

Viewing trends in the individual European markets vary strongly. The UK, for example, boasts a huge 98.5 per cent device penetration of smart TVs per household, 30 per cent higher than the European average (68.4 per cent) and more than double as much than in the least-equipped markets. Accompanied by over 8.5 billion app launches per day on smart TVs across Europe’s main markets, this prevalence has led to a diversified video landscape in the UK, split between streaming and linear TV. Combined with a large population and high spending per capita, this positions the UK as Europe’s top advertising market – a fact underlined by the growth of commercial TV to 5.27 billion GBP, which stems from innovative collaborations with new advertising marketplaces and measurement solutions.

The value of trusted media holds strong even within news contexts. There is a growing number of ‘News Junkies’ – people who, on average, check the news approximately six times and read seven news articles per day. The research clearly shows that advertising alongside quality news content is safe for brands, irrespective of the news topic.

Stéphane Coruble, Chief Executive Officer, RTL AdAlliance, commented: “The media industry is flooded with data that can appear impressive, yet without expert interpretation, it often lacks meaning. Experts play a pivotal role in interpreting this data meaningfully. While global platforms frequently communicate seemingly impressive global numbers, transparency and accountability on campaign and market level are the more important differentiators. Which is what we are doing in the Total Video landscape. Our TV Key Facts aims to provide locally rooted, transparent, accountable and brand-safe data and insights for advertisers.”

Aurélie Brunet de Courssou, Sr. Director of Marketing, RTL AdAlliance, added: “The aim of the TV Key Facts is to provide advertisers and media experts with a report that combines meaningful data on our industry with the newest research and insights available. With country-specific highlights and global perspectives, more accurate profiles can be drawn for each market, enriched by interviews with experts on the newest data and studies. Most importantly, the TV Key Facts provides brands and advertisers with a recipe for building trust, the ultimate KPI.”

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Categories: Advertising, Articles, Broadcast, Connected TV, Consumer Behaviour, OTT, Research

Tags: advertising, RTL, Smart TV