Channels and formats
What is linear TV?
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what it means here
Here is what the term means for a UK buyer
The definition above holds anywhere. Buying media in the UK adds the detail below, including where AdBuyMCP does something different.
A linear spot reaches everyone watching that break, while an addressable buy reaches only the households you selected. That makes linear a reach instrument and addressable a targeting one, and it makes the fidelity question different: on linear there is no audience approximation to score, only an audience forecast to trust. UK linear inventory sits behind sales houses and is transacted as booking paperwork, which is why no platform turns a compiled linear plan into booked inventory in the UK without a sales house in the path. Linear TV sits outside an AdBuyMCP awareness plan.
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related terms
These terms sit next to this one
Most confusion in media buying comes from two adjacent terms being used interchangeably, so these are the neighbours worth reading next.
Addressable TV
Television advertising where different households watching the same programme at the same time receive different adverts, swapped in at the set-top box or in the stream. It is bought on household attributes and geography rather than on programme and time slot.
Insertion order (IO)
A contractual document committing an advertiser to buy specified advertising from a specified seller at agreed terms. The mechanism by which media that is not bought programmatically is bought instead.
Reach
The number of distinct people or households exposed to a campaign at least once, as opposed to the total number of impressions delivered. Usually expressed as a count or as a percentage of a defined universe.
same group
These terms are also in Channels and formats
The channels UK advertisers buy, and the words the sellers use for them.