"You never know what’s up ahead! The universe decides." "In this case, it was the viewers. Last few seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – the lines are now closed. Who’ll be giving Giovanni, Bill and Tom, Ronan and Shirin a run for their money? The viewers at home have decided. Congratulations to team Kool Savas and Ezo! You’re headed back to the 'The Voice of Germany' studio and straight into the semi-finals. No more red chairs here." Host Thore Schölermann jokes with the winning team of "The Voice Rap by CUPRA", the latest show in the "The Voice" universe.

The innovative show is broadcast on Joyn and ProSieben. In a total of eight episodes, up-and-coming rappers competed against each other for the first time. The winner of "The Voice Rap by CUPRA" ultimately chosen by viewers went on to even have the chance of being named "The Voice of Germany" 2023. A streaming experiment among the young target group that delighted advertising customers from the outset, as confirmed by Giuseppe Fiordispina, Marketing Director CUPRA Germany: "Just as with 'The Voice of Germany', our aim is to establish a creative space to generate fresh momentum for newcomer musical talent. That’s why we have decided to not only continue our long-standing cooperation, but also to take it a step further. As the title sponsor of the new rap series, we have enhanced our TV presence with a digital format, extending our reach to a new, digitally savvy target group that loves rap and lives and breathes streaming."

In-house creative marketer Seven.One AdFactory, working closely with ProSiebenSat.1’s editorial units, was responsible for integrating CUPRA into the hit show’s rap spin-off. Seven.One AdFactory is viewed as an industry expert and creative innovator in the areas of 360-degree marketing, product placement and native brand staging. The quality of product placement was raised to a new level with the integrations in "Germany’s Next Topmodel", with brands like MAC Cosmetics and Intimissimi now occupying a fixed place in the program and significantly contributing to the show’s concept by, for instance, awarding modeling jobs as prizes. High-profile placements – and the first use of AI-based virtual placements – are setting the pace in the industry.

Annika Oliwa has been working at Seven.One AdFactory for two years and believes the streaming space offers fresh creative opportunities: "In the past, we focused on placements in our TV programming. The integration of Joyn has given us and our customers a whole new playground." A playground that offers advertising customers new opportunities with regard to type of presence and, above all, access to additional target groups that are hard to reach through traditional media.

The CUPRA brand has banked on the emotional, high-quality environment of "The Voice of Germany" on TV for many years. This year, "The Voice of Germany" and CUPRA joined forces in making their first foray into the streaming environment. Over a total of eight episodes on Joyn in partnership with title sponsor CUPRA, "The Voice Rap by CUPRA" sought Germany’s most talented rap artist. With its elaborate production and rappers Kool Savas and Dardan as coaches, "The Voice Rap by CUPRA" thrilled viewers and advertising customers alike. The show’s winner went straight through to the semi-finals of "The Voice of Germany".

Seven.One Media CEO Carsten Schwecke explains: "We are tapping into new target groups in the streaming environment alongside our advertising customers. That calls for trust and the courage to explore new, as yet uncharted paths together. That’s why the major brand cooperations on Joyn this year were entered into with long-standing partners."

Customer trust is also the reason Annika looks forward to coming to work every day: "Whether for Joyn or our linear stations – on set, we are the mouthpiece of the brands. We need to understand precisely what the customer’s priorities are in advance, so that we can suitably set the scene for the brand on the ground. The aim is to align customer expectations with the editorial concept, media law requirements and production processes. A brand integration is not a delivered, ready-made commercial. Ultimately, the customer doesn’t know exactly what the end result will look like. They are placing a massive amount of trust in us."

Twice the advertising recall of YouTube spots

But trust alone is not enough when it comes to media decisions. Several broad-based market research studies have demonstrated the advertising impact of Joyn and shown that advertising environment makes all the difference also in the digital age. For example, the media equivalence study carried out by the marketing division Seven.One Media shows that commercials on Joyn have significantly more impact than YouTube spots. After just one exposure on Joyn, spontaneous advertising recall is almost double that of YouTube ads. As the number of exposures increases, advertising recall grows on both channels, but the gap remains. At four exposures, advertising on Joyn achieves 60% recall, compared with just 36% on YouTube.

And there is something else that clearly sets the entertainment group’s offering apart from its Google competitor: Whereas the impact of advertising on Joyn continues to grow even after many exposures to the advertisement, the impact curve for YouTube advertising flattens out fairly quickly. Advertising on Joyn is comparable to TV in terms of advertising impact, rather than to other video offerings such as YouTube. The impact of YouTube TrueView ads is at a much lower level and saturates faster.

The study also examines the cross-media advertising impact. It finds that TV and broadcaster video on demand (BVoD) offerings not only have a similar impact, but can also be very effectively combined or substituted for each other. In contrast, replacing TV with YouTube inevitably leads to a loss of impact. The difference in impact is attributable to the type of content and viewers’ usage behavior in front of the screen. Joyn provides high-quality, long-format video content, which offers crucial advantages over fast-moving platforms such as YouTube, TikTok or Facebook.

Sound on and full-screen mode for maximum advertising impact

Like traditional TV, BVoD is mainly watched in a relaxed lean-back position and in full-screen mode. Optimum conditions for advertising campaign effectiveness. Because advertising in BVoD environments such as Joyn is more readily noticed. This is corroborated by the Track the Success study, which records the screen coverage of the advertising and viewers’ visual attention to the screen. The study explored the use of BVoD and YouTube both on TV screens and on smartphones: On YouTube, advertising has a 58% chance of getting noticed, while the figure for BVoD is significantly higher at 89%. This is because TVs are always used in full-screen mode, while the screen coverage on smartphones depends on whether the user is holding the device horizontally or vertically. In the experiment, the test subjects watched BVoD exclusively horizontally in full-screen mode. In contrast, YouTube is mainly viewed vertically, so that the video window covers only a small section of the screen.

Gone are the days when it was just the well-known brands from TV that would draw viewers to Joyn. Similar to "The Voice Rap by CUPRA", "Promi Big Brother – Die PENNY Challenge" (Celebrity Big Brother – the PENNY Challenge) created captivating new video moments for viewers and advertisers alike through playful live concepts and by sharpening the focus on the demands of the streaming target group. For the fifth time running, housemates in the eleventh series of "Promi Big Brother" were able to shop in the PENNY market, providing entertainment alongside advertising impact. At the same time, PENNY expanded its involvement to include the streaming environment. As the title sponsor of the challenge show "Promi Big Brother – Die PENNY Challenge", PENNY has now also stepped onto the digital stage. In "Promi Big Brother – Die PENNY Challenge", nine content creators and reality stars restocked shelves from memory under the watchful eye of Big Brother, battling it out live to gain a voting advantage to win a wildcard for the "Promi Big Brother" house.

The German-speaking world’s advertising-financed streaming champion

ProSiebenSat.1 aims to develop Joyn into the leading advertising video-on-demand-streamer in the German-speaking world. "Our advertising customers need high reach, whether through traditional TV or digital streaming. In any case, the boundaries between channels are becoming increasingly blurry for both users and advertising customers. A large proportion of viewers use Joyn on the big TV screen. The growing use of connected TV content is opening up whole new opportunities for the advertising market. Joyn brings together the advertising impact and charismatic appeal of our TV shows with digital broadcasting opportunities. What’s more, Joyn lets us reach notably younger target groups who are now consuming less linear TV content," explains Marketing Director Carsten Schwecke.

Joyn has already made good progress toward expanding its reach this year. It recorded consistent growth for a total of five consecutive months, exceeding its own previous monthly record month after month. Joyn achieved its biggest jump in November, recording month-on-month growth of 21% to 9.1 million viewers.

Already reaching the young target groups, who are increasingly difficult for advertisers to access, Joyn provides marketable reach across all target groups. In this way, Joyn is becoming a kind of national counterweight to the global platforms, as Anja Jeremias, Managing Director of the pilot media agency, emphasizes: "We welcome Joyn as a national video guarantor. We need country-specific content that can hold its own against the competition. In our view, this can currently only be delivered by the two major TV groups in terms of breadth, variety and quality. Joyn positioned its content for younger age segments at a very early stage. The cross-media approach using social media and influencers was also a good move that should be pursued more strategically and fine-tuned."

The performance of "Promi Big Brother" on Joyn was particularly impressive. More than a million people watched the reality event on Joyn – in many cases, people whom the show had failed to reach on linear TV. The cross-divisional editorial teams were pleased to be able to add the 8% uplift in user numbers to the actual TV reach.

The fact that, of all shows, "Promi Big Brother" is responsible for the year’s best figures on Joyn makes project manager Annika Oliwa beam: "We act as an interface both internally and externally. As an intersection between editorial and marketing, between customer wishes, legal requirements and the production company. This isn’t always easy, but it’s never boring. However well we plan setting the stage for a brand, there is always a chance that a sign will have to be changed at the last minute or an editorial decision will need to be taken on the ground, with a knock-on effect for the integration. It’s an unbelievable feeling when the integrations make it onto the screen and the brand or advertised product is ultimately able to shine within the content. This is all the more so when the integration also feels natural to our viewers. In the case of PENNY, Joyn users even picked the contestants shopping at the discount store as the highlight of the show. That’s the holy grail – the brand advertised is perceived as a fundamental component of the program and fits seamlessly into the content."

But no matter how tried and trusted an advertising cooperation is on linear TV, execution on the streaming platform has its own set of rules: "We also need to rethink our advertising execution for Joyn. On this platform, we have different options, can play ping-pong with the main program, harness the streaming environment for younger, more niche adaptations, for example, and then lead back to the main program. We are well ahead of our global competitors in this respect. We know the needs of the local advertising market, we understand our advertising customers and are able to join with them in benefiting from our experience in the TV world," explains Carsten Schwecke.

Thrilling live moments as a USP

Joyn’s advertising customers are inspired especially by the big live moments learned from linear TV. "Joyn will grow in significance and gain relevance with each success story. Media usage behavior is rapidly adapting. Streaming offerings have changed the way video is consumed, but we are confronted by a glut of content and platform providers. Live streaming events could herald a welcome change in media consumption," says Anja Jeremias, Managing Director, pilot Group. Anja Stockhausen, Managing Director Publicis Media, takes a similar view: "The importance of live environments is set to grow like wild fire, with shows playing a particularly significant role. Local platforms like Joyn need to invest in exclusive content."

ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE’s entertainment segment is meeting the demand for more live entertainment in 2024, including with the reality entertainment model. "Big Brother" is returning to German screens. For 100 days, Joyn will broadcast a 24-hour live stream of the housemates in the containers. Additional daily and weekly roundups will provide an overview of the highlights of container life. Henrik Pabst, Managing Director of the entertainment segment of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE and Chief Content Officer: "'Promi Big Brother' is a big hit both on Joyn and on SAT.1. Viewers love the program in both the linear and digital environments – especially the 24/7 live stream on Joyn. Twenty-four years after the first season of 'Big Brother' was broadcast in Germany, Joyn is bringing the show back to its roots."