Understanding Need States and their relation to Broadcaster Video-On-Demand

Need states aren’t new. In 1943, Abraham Maslow wrote a paper named Hierarchy of Needs, in which he curated a system that tier-ranked human motivations. And in turn, he helped to frame the way health practitioners assess clients’ needs even today. Now, need states are more commonly known as the motivations that cause a person to purchase; they are the drivers of consumer behaviour. And this is valuable because it enables brands to tailor their content. After all, identifying a user’s needs helps create more informed decision-making, which is vital when targeting different audience profiles within the CTV landscape. In research published three years ago, Google recognised the necessity of detecting their needs states as they identified how the needs of a consumer shape search behaviour. While it is not a new article, the piece succeeded in breaking down the circumstances that drive activity on Google’s search engine and is still incredibly relevant today. In doing so, it concluded that there are six need states: surprise me, help me, reassure me, educate me, impress me, and thrill me. Thus, proving that emotion most definitely fuels marketers’ thinking.

Recently, Thinkbox produced an investigation into need states in TV advertising. Their research is part of a larger study, The Age of Television: the needs that drive us (2018) and the findings have been featured in each TV Master’s course since being published. Thinkbox came to the conclusion that there are eight separate need states that drive video viewing, and these states are indulge, escape, experience, in-touch, comfort, unwind, distract and do. While the different states seem self-explanatory, there are intricacies that set them apart. To watch television to escape is to watch it with the purpose of immersing oneself in another world. To watch television to experience is to watch it with the desire to feel part of something, whether that’s joining in on a social conversation or experiencing a shared experience through live television. Indulge, is watching television to pursue interests and hobbies and to-do is viewing for information that one can apply to practical tasks in their life. While to unwind may seem the same as watching for comfort, people who watch television to un-wind are watching it to feel relaxed and de-stress whereas when watching for comfort, their relaxation comes from watching a familiar programme and experiencing family and couple time while doing so. To watch to distract is when one needs to fill space and counteract boredom. And to watch to stay in touch is unsurprisingly to keep up-to-date with cultural events in the world.

https://www.thinkbox.tv/research/thinkbox-research/the-age-of-television-the-needs-that-drive-us

Thinkbox’s findings are imperative in understanding the motivations that drive people to watch television. The eight need states break down viewers’ behaviour without oversimplifying them in the process. And what makes the results even more valuable is their separation of the needs states into platforms, a separation that is vital when making sense of the TV landscape. Rather than concentrating exclusively on traditional Linear TV, it takes into account online video and the entire VOD space.

Focusing on Broadcaster Video-On-Demand specifically, shows that ‘the need to immerse ourselves in content to escape drives on-demand viewing’, as 5% of all adults use Broadcaster VOD to escape. Broadcaster VOD is the go-to place for people to lose themselves in video content, as the high-production value assists with the viewer’s wish to engage fully. The high-quality dramas that are on-demand and perfect for evening viewing contribute massively to ‘escape’ being the principal need state for BVOD. Out of the 8 need-states, in-touch and do are the least used when watching BVOD. Research shows that when adults want to keep informed by the news or learn something to help accomplish a goal, they tend to gravitate towards online video (56%) or live TV (31%) instead. These findings prove the importance of understanding your need-states because without these differentiations, one cannot fully understand the varying motivations that drive all forms of viewing.

Sources used: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html ; https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-6-need-states-drive-search-behavior/348472/ ; https://www.thinkbox.tv/news-and-opinion/newsroom/why-do-we-watch-tv-and-netflix-or-use-youtube-the-age-of-television-reveals-all/