The Bigger Picture: white paper launch eventFrom changing viewing habits and new creative opportunities to smarter targeting and measurement, our white paper launch explored how TV has evolved, and what it means for travel brands.From changing viewing habits and new creative opportunities to smarter targeting and measurement, our white paper launch explored how TV has evolved, and what it means for travel brands.

Oct 23, 2026

The Bigger Picture: white paper launch event

From changing viewing habits and new creative opportunities to smarter targeting and measurement, our white paper launch explored how TV has evolved, and what it means for travel brands.

Emily Williams

Research Executive

Emily Williams

Research Executive

Not long ago, TV meant a handful of channels and a 30-second spot in an ad break, yet today viewers typically move between live TV, streaming and YouTube, giving travel brands far more ways to reach them. Making sense of those opportunities is the focus of The Bigger Picture, our latest white paper launched earlier this month in collaboration with Piqniq. Joining the discussion were Harry Ward Masters from Thinkbox, and a panel featuring Matt Hill (Sky Media), Sam Hicks (Channel 4) and Abul Noor (ITV). Here’s what we learned.

The perceptions holding TV back

Opening the event, our Chief Strategy Officer Jasman Ahmad and Piqniq’s Founding Partner Katy Sharpe challenged some of the assumptions marketers still hold about TV, starting with cost. ‘Isn’t TV expensive?’ is a preconception that still puts many brands off, yet Jasman highlighted that in 2025, more than a quarter of TV advertisers spent less than £50,000, while half spent less than £250,000.

He also questioned the disconnect between how TV is planned and watched, as viewers choose content rather than thinking about the channel or platform. Interestingly marketers often approach planning the other way round. Katy reinforced how viewing is changing rather than disappearing, with 70% of UK households now having access to at least one subscription streaming service, while affluent over-55s still watch around two-and-a-half hours of video a day, three-quarters of which is linear.

As Katy acknowledged, the industry’s ‘soup of acronyms’, from BVOD and SVOD to AVOD, FAST and CTV, can make TV feel more complicated than it is, when audiences still turn to it to switch off, be entertained and be inspired.

Living, looking, booking: TV’s role across the travel journey

At Accord, we plan around three stages of the travel journey: living, looking and booking. Jasman explained that while some channels create demand and others capture it, TV can do both, keeping brands front of mind while also supporting action further down the funnel. As he put it, ‘TV delivers more than just awareness, and it’s more immediate than we think’.

Katy then showed how today’s TV formats can support moments, from advertiser-funded programmes and sponsorships that inspire, to addressable TV that can tailor messages to different audiences or locations, and pause, dynamic and shoppable formats that bring people closer to action. That immediacy came through again during

the panel, when Matt Hill shared how Monzo’s Get Busy Living campaign increased search by 30% within its first week on air, showing how quickly TV can move people from awareness towards consideration.

Bigger creative ideas do not have to mean bigger production

Big budgets and long lead times are no longer the only route onto TV, with our Chief Creative Officer Richard Anderson outlining four production options to suit different ideas and budgets:

Stock footage: A quick and cost-effective way to trial TV, particularly when filming across multiple destinations is difficult, although shared footage can make it harder to stand out.
Owned and filmed: Combines existing assets with newly filmed content, creating more authentic, reusable work while offering greater control.
AI-generated: Opens up ideas that may previously have required time and bigger budgets, from creating consistent characters to bringing new settings and effects to life, although human oversight remains vital as continuity needs careful management.
On location: The biggest investment of the four but offers the most creative control and authenticity when the people, place and story are central to the idea.

The right approach depends on the idea, brand and budget, with the opportunity not simply to make TV more cheaply, but to make ambitious ideas possible for more brands.

Big budgets and long lead times are no longer the only route onto TV, with our Chief Creative Officer Richard Anderson outlining four production options to suit different ideas and budgets:

Stock footage: A quick and cost-effective way to trial TV, particularly when filming across multiple destinations is difficult, although shared footage can make it harder to stand out.
Owned and filmed: Combines existing assets with newly filmed content, creating more authentic, reusable work while offering greater control.
AI-generated: Opens up ideas that may previously have required time and bigger budgets, from creating consistent characters to bringing new settings and effects to life, although human oversight remains vital as continuity needs careful management.
On location: The biggest investment of the four but offers the most creative control and authenticity when the people, place and story are central to the idea.

The right approach depends on the idea, brand and budget, with the opportunity not simply to make TV more cheaply, but to make ambitious ideas possible for more brands.

Big budgets and long lead times are no longer the only route onto TV, with our Chief Creative Officer Richard Anderson outlining four production options to suit different ideas and budgets:

Stock footage: A quick and cost-effective way to trial TV, particularly when filming across multiple destinations is difficult, although shared footage can make it harder to stand out.
Owned and filmed: Combines existing assets with newly filmed content, creating more authentic, reusable work while offering greater control.
AI-generated: Opens up ideas that may previously have required time and bigger budgets, from creating consistent characters to bringing new settings and effects to life, although human oversight remains vital as continuity needs careful management.
On location: The biggest investment of the four but offers the most creative control and authenticity when the people, place and story are central to the idea.

The right approach depends on the idea, brand and budget, with the opportunity not simply to make TV more cheaply, but to make ambitious ideas possible for more brands.

Thinkbox: why TV continues to deliver

With consumer confidence falling while UK ad spend is forecast to reach a record £50bn, Harry Ward Masters explored how marketers can find greater clarity in an increasingly complicated media landscape, pointing to Total TV’s reach, trust and effectiveness.

Thinkbox’s research shows just how much the viewing environment matters, with ad recall 27% higher in the living room, 60% higher on a TV set than on a laptop or smartphone, and 23% higher when people watch together, while ads shown alongside professionally produced TV content see 44% higher trust. Shared viewing strengthens that further, leading to 75% greater ad liking and 48% lower decay in purchase intent, particularly relevant to travel, where holidays are often discussed and decided together.

Thinkbox also found that having TV on the plan improves lower-funnel response channels by 13.7%, while Profit Ability 2 found TV accounted for 54.7% of advertising’s full payback. Its Growth Gap study also suggests travel brands could increase TV investment by 275% and still see a profitable return, underlining the wider effect TV can have across the media plan.

Putting it into practice: lessons from the panel

The panel brought many of these themes together, particularly around how targeting and measurement have changed what TV can do. Abul Noor shared ITV’s work with British Airways, where dynamic pause ads targeted affluent travellers within 50 miles of departure airports, delivering a 43% attribution rate, a 21% lift in positive brand perception and a 28% increase in consideration.

Matt Hill also highlighted Centre Parcs achieving around 15x ROI by using first-party data to reach lapsed customers, although the message was not to target for targeting’s sake, with broader reach still playing an important role alongside more tactical activity.

Measurement was just as important, with Matt explaining how Sky can link household exposure with website activity to test the additional impact TV is having, while Sam Hicks stressed that success should always be measured against the job TV was given, particularly in travel, where the journey from seeing an ad to making a booking can take months.

For brands testing TV for the first time, the advice was therefore to start with the business problem, stay focused and agree the measurement upfront, using the first campaign to ‘build, test, learn, scale’, or, as Sam put it more simply, “just do it”

Download white paper

If you have any questions or would like to talk about what Total TV could look like for your brand, get in touch with Jasman Ahmad, Chief Strategy Officer, at jasman.ahmad@accordmarketing.com.

Download white paper

If you have any questions or would like to talk about what Total TV could look like for your brand, get in touch with Jasman Ahmad, Chief Strategy Officer, at jasman.ahmad@accordmarketing.com.

Download white paper

If you have any questions or would like to talk about what Total TV could look like for your brand, get in touch with Jasman Ahmad, Chief Strategy Officer, at jasman.ahmad@accordmarketing.com.