2nd edition of The Living Room Club is a wrap!

Naturally, we kicked things off with our own media landscape and viewing habits for CTV research: The New Life of the Living Room, for which we are celebrating our 4th edition! Our Marketing Director, Aurélie Brunet de Courssou, lead us through some of the most compelling and interesting numbers this year. 

In conversation with our beloved TV Host, Louise Ekland, they focused on key takeaways like how viewer habits are constantly evolving and the fact that the lines between digital and legacy media are becoming more and more blurred. With so much happening, it’s tempting to simplify things—to group everything under one big ‘CTV’ umbrella. But is that really the right approach?​ Hint: Read the study to find out! 

This year, we also expanded our geographical scope and included Austria, Switzerland, and Poland. We now cover 14 markets in Europe. We love this country-specific granularity: let’s embrace European diversity! 
We also maintained the US as a key comparison point.

Our expert speakers Kelly Williams, Managing Director Commercial at ITV, Matt Green, Director Global Media Services at WFA, James Parnum, Head of Planning at Essence Mediacom UK and Stéphane Coruble, CEO of RTL AdAlliance discussed the study’s results. They also shared their view on differentiation, measurement, and trust in the digital media world. 

Want to see the replay? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. And don’t hesitate to reach out to us in case you would like to learn more about a specific country, or audience demographic. We’ve got it all! 

After the buzz and success this live stream warranted, for the people live in London, the rest of the day held some more interesting insights and great panel discussions on the things that our industry cares about and really discusses. The fact that the afternoon is not recorded gives our guests the opportunity to ask the hard questions, and network to find new collaboration opportunities and possibilities to tackle some of the things on their to-do list. 

In the afternoon, we thus started with a panel on “How to foster better collaboration between publishers to be more relevant for advertisers” – a mouth full, but basically the aim of the event itself. While Guy Rogers from Lenovo provided the advertiser’s perspective, M6’s Maxime André, Paul Gubbins of Tubi, and Joe Connors from DAZN countered with the platform and broadcaster view on the topics. It was a great discussion that helped see more clearly, what advertisers are looking for and what publishers can provide to help them advertise better. 

At its core, this is an RTL AdAlliance event, so a focus on our strategy and topics that we deem important cannot be left out. “Simply put: we are boldly European” was a keynote by Stéphane Coruble, CEO and Dr. Oliver Vesper, deputy CEO of RTL AdAlliance. Even with this provocative title, they made it clear very quickly that we have not changed this focus due to the political tensions occurring, but that we have been the European counterpart to the American tech giants for a long time. Need proof? Just look at the RTL Beach during the Cannes Lions – where we are the sole European broadcaster and publisher beach among the US tech giants! 

For the final session after lunch, we organised two expert keynotes and one last panel. 

First, Nick Chiarelli, Trends & Foresight Lead at IPSOS, talked to us about trends in his keynote called “Navigating Tensions” that focused on what the challenging world of 2025 means for media and advertisers. Starting with a reality check that we are already a quarter into the 21st century or even worse, halfway through the restless decade, Nick focused on the global trends and what the public around the world is thinking, feeling and doing – should be simple enough. 

He emphasized the following key tensions: The balance between being pro-global (64% agree that globalisation is good for my country) while maintaining a sense of national pride (63% would say they are very proud of their country), the tension between embracing progress and honouring traditions, the struggle between trust and deceit, and the conflict between long-term success and short-term gains in today’s fast-paced world. 

After being left with these and more insights, it was time for the last panel of the day. With quality speakers Bérangère Degni-Rezé, Head of TV Plus at Samsung, Tony Mawer, Head of Commercial Insights at ITV and David Fletcher, Chief Commercial & Financial Officer, Investment at Omnicom Media Group we talked about all things premium. “It’s a quality thing – does premium content truly make a difference?” – spoiler, yes it does. The experts concluded that in a maturing CTV market, content quality will make the difference, and according to David Fletcher, it does impact advertising outcomes.

Finally, close friend and regular speaker analyst Ian Whittaker concluded the day with his keynote entitled “Why the future for Free to Air Broadcasters is positive – if they can keep their nerve.” Basically, broadcasters need to be prouder of what they do, be more boastful about their advantages, and really take a stand. 

And with that, this amazing day was wrapped. Again, a huge thank you to the expert speakers who shared their knowledge and insights with us, to all the guest and club members, who made this day such a great success and of course to the team at RTL AdAlliance, without whom this would not have been possible! 

Thanks for reading and see you next time!