The general director of M6 Publicité draws up an initial assessment of M6+ and shows how she intends to continue to boost advertising budgets in 2025.
JDN. M6+ has been live for six months. What assessment do you draw from the interest generated by the audiences? ?
Hortense Thomine-Desmazures. Since the launch, we have broken audience records. In October, M6+ had just over 24 million unique visitors, an increase of more than 26% compared to October 2023. On November 7 in particular, we broke our one-day record, with 3.4 million unique visitors. , while the daily average is 2.1 million users. Finally, since its launch, M6+ has already accumulated more than 40% more hours consumed than in 2023.
How do you explain these results? ?
Users are changing the way they consume television, this is indisputable, with a weight of non-linear which can reach 50% for some of our shows, like Beijing Express or reality TV programs for example. But it is true that all our efforts have also contributed to this evolution. M6+ came with new exclusive content, not to mention the programs from the linear which are a hit. Distribution is also much more massive than before, with M6+ being offered in 95% of connected TVs in France. This generates incremental audiences, new users who are not on operator boxes, with complementary profiles compared to our usual users. Finally, the experience is much smoother with new functionalities, notably search and personalization, and a significant reduction in advertising pressure linked to the implementation of new specifications, which our users notice and appreciate, according to the results of our latest internal barometer.
During the launch, you relied heavily on the quality of advertising exposure by limiting pre-rolls and reducing ad breaks. Did you manage to achieve this goal? ?
Yes, we have succeeded in limiting advertising pressure: today we broadcast on average 4 minutes of advertising per hour of content consumed compared to 4.5 to 5 minutes previously. This is firstly linked to the implementation of new advertising rules (less pre-roll, stricter capping, minimum time between two advertising screens) which optimize the advertising experience. Finally, as the number of users has increased significantly, driven by the attractiveness of our programs and the expansion of our distribution channels, mechanically the advertising pressure per user has decreased.
Does this mean that advertiser demand has remained stable ?
No, advertiser demand has increased, undoubtedly influenced by the rise of CTV offers with many channels and services launching practically at the same time, which has resulted in an overall positive dynamic on demand. . We can cite TF1, M6, but also the opening of Netflix to advertising and the arrival of Amazon Prime Video.
Since the start of the year, our advertising revenue has increased by 35% compared to the same period of 2023. Not only are our historical advertisers increasing their levels of investment in streaming (to better reflect evolving uses) , but we are also attracting new accounts, more than a hundred since launch. For the latter, affordable entry tickets and our data offers combined with the quality of the TV screen (which attracts more than 75% of our audiences) are considerable assets. Demand for streaming is therefore growing significantly, but we still have a lot of room for improvement to better reflect the convergence of TV uses.
Your CPMs have therefore not changed despite the drop in advertising pressure ?
No, we have not planned for inflation on our digital inventories, even if mechanically with the increase in the weight of our data campaigns, the average CPM has increased in value. We remain very economical compared to the prices charged by video on demand (SVOD) service platforms.
With M6+, have you managed to change the share of AVOD on the group’s revenues? ?
Yes, the share of streaming advertising revenue in the group’s advertising revenue increased from 7% to 10%. Something to rejoice about given that we had set ourselves the objective of reaching 20% by 2028, by including payment. We are therefore in line, even ahead of schedule, with our strategic plan, having already achieved more than half of our objective after only six months. We must continue to accelerate and we set ourselves the objective of reaching 15% in 2025.
How do you plan to get there? ?
We are going to encourage advertisers to invest more in streaming: those who put 15% of their total video budget on M6+ will benefit from promotions on the shelf. But it’s not just that. We have also reorganized by unifying our TV and streaming sales teams: now a single unified video team is responsible for linear and non-linear issues, and this will help us to embark on digital agreements in a much more ambitious way for 2025. We have also set up a digital innovation department to develop our sales tools so that they enable unified global video purchasing within three to five years.
This end of the year promises to be difficult for TV channels, advertising budgets are falling. What do you notice ?
The television sector is experiencing an atypical development at the end of the year, with an adjustment in advertising investments. Yes, we observed a drop at the end of the year in TV, which can be explained by a complicated economic and political context. Two sectors are particularly affected: luxury, although traditionally very strong before Christmas which this year is suffering the downward effects of the Chinese market, and automobiles. Finally, we are not discounting a post-Olympic effect, certain brands having invested massively around this event, and therefore having much less or no budget at all at the end of the year. Digital remains in very strong growth.
