CANAL+ BRAND SOLUTIONS is CANAL+’s advertising network, covering all TV and digital brands of one of the biggest French media and telecommunication conglomerates. This includes all the linear TV channels of the group as well as premium third party digital TV & streaming partnerships, including Discovery and MAX (HBO). Like all digital advertising stakeholders, they see attention as an incremental and welcomed new measurement tool in a shaken and ultra-segmented industry. We met with Emmanuelle Godard, Digital, Data & Innovation Director, and Dorothée Alabeurthe, Marketing Director, to get to know more about their strategy and the way they deploy attention measurement, partnering with ad tech platforms like Adloox.

Television, like digital advertising, is undergoing a revolution, which the CANAL+ Group is leveraging to diversify and enhance its offerings.

"The positioning of our advertising agency is closely linked to the positioning of the group itself. Our mission at CANAL+ BRAND SOLUTIONS is to transform all of CANAL+'s assets into opportunities for brands," explains Dorothée Alabeurthe, Marketing Director, also responsible for studies and strategic planning at CANAL+ BRAND SOLUTIONS, having been with the group for over 10 years after stints at M6 and Bolloré Intermedia. "As we can see, there's a significant convergence in the television market between subscription-based models and free offerings financed by advertising."

Indeed, CANAL+, historically based on a subscription model, has developed a strong suite of free brands (C8, CNEWS, etc.) and therefore possesses inventory based on these free contents via myCANAL. The agency also markets advertising space beyond CANAL+'s assets through third-party partners like Max, OQEE, Eurosport, and UGC. It's a truly multi-media ecosystem with unique verticals that offer brands a wide segmentation. "We reach over 90% of 25-49 year olds with our brands each month, and our ambition with our assets and partners is to offer all the opportunities that the television of tomorrow can provide, from linear to AVOD to streaming."

It is within the team of Emmanuelle Godard, Director of Digital, Data, and Innovation since 2020, that all digital campaigns of the agency are managed: "One of the major challenges for the agency today is to expand our inventories. Demand often exceeds our supply, and we frequently reach capacity," explains Emmanuelle. "Our growth therefore relies on expanding our inventories, both internally and externally. Internally, for example, last year we introduced advertising on connected TVs within myCANAL. Externally, I'm referring to the inclusion of third-party publishers under our agency, such as Eurosport, OQEE Ciné, and now Max, Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming platform. Our inventory grows, but it remains focused, as it's crucial for us to maintain ultra-premium content aligned with our DNA."

The second challenge is to address the increasingly strong pressure from advertisers on the ROI of their advertising investments: "Advertisers and their agencies are more than ever seeking to maximize the effectiveness of each advertising contact. It is within this context that measuring attention, which is a prerequisite for a campaign to have an effect, has become a central issue. If attention is to become a new purchasing criterion, it therefore seems crucial for us to measure all our environments accurately."

Creative innovation, the primary driver of advertising attention.

The context is a key lever in attention, as well as advertising clutter: "We are one of the agencies with one of the lowest levels of advertising clutter, and it's deliberate," explains Dorothée Alabeurthe. But one of the primary drivers of attention lies in creativity. "We can offer creative, distinctive, and immersive formats, thanks to our in-house creative entity, CANAL BRAND FACTORY, which allows us to offer these custom formats based on innovative technologies, from AI to 3D." Through these experiments, the agency has been able to demonstrate how this is an important lever for generating stronger advertising attention and therefore stronger brand recall.

"The agency's creative team has released highly impactful formats, where we have seen click-through rates well above what we were used to seeing," adds Emmanuelle Godard.

Here is the type of format, for example, that the agency proposed to Volkswagen to develop awareness for its Tiguan model.

Understanding attention performance through incremental tests on in-stream video.

"It's important for the agency to be able to audit advertising attention within our environments, and Adloox has supported us in conducting this audit," explains Emmanuelle Godard. "By incorporating the concept of attention and correlating the results with other KPIs, we can assess the potential receptivity of users during the broadcast. This approach is particularly useful for branding campaigns. For example, we conducted a one-month test in France on the in-stream video player of CANAL+, myCANAL.” The results are significant, with an average score approaching 84/100 compared to a similar benchmark around 30 points for a broadcasting context during the same period. "This is partly explained by the quality of our inventories and video placements, with a 'time-in-view' rate 77% higher than benchmarks and a screen share rate nearly 2 times higher than benchmarks in the French market. These results confirm the quality of exposure that brands receive on myCANAL," concludes Emmanuelle Godard.

Learn more about Adloox Attention Measurement →