Yesterday I was involved in a lively discussion of issues related to the measurement of advertising effectiveness. This wide-ranging conversation covered a number of topics but the one that continues to attract my attention is the challenge posed to advertisers by media fragmentation. When it takes more money to reach fewer people and your budget is fixed, why not stick to what you know works?
It seems to me that the new media party is slowly losing steam. Everyone has tried the cocktail – take one measure each of display ads, social media, widgets and mobile, stir, don’t shake - and many are wondering why they didn’t just have a beer instead. After all, it is so much easier to reach into the refrigerator, pull out the familiar bottle, and pop the cap. TV is like that. It’s easy, it’s familiar, and you know what you are getting. By contrast, the cocktail just seems to take too much effort for too little reward. You have to buy the right ingredients, it is tough to get the mixture right, and the initial fizz soon gives way to something that seems a bit flat and unsatisfying.
OK, I am exaggerating for effect, but I have little doubt that the people who hold the purse strings are beginning to wonder if their marketing money is being well spent, particularly as they are often not part of the new media social whirl. Their concern must be exacerbated by the news that traditional television viewing is only very slowly ceding its ground to new media. A recent article in the Financial Times reports that Ofcom, the U.K.’s media and telecommunications regulator, found that in 2007 TV took a whopping 51 percent of the average Brit’s daily media time, compared to just over 5 percent for Internet usage. What is more, Ofcom found 17 percent of households with broadband watched television over the Internet at the start of 2008, compared with 9 percent last year. So even when they go online, people are watching TV, often to catch up on programs they would otherwise miss.
TV, it seems, is far from losing its appeal for most Brits, and it is not because they are backward when it comes to adopting the Internet. The proportion of people online in the U.K. is similar to that in the United States, and advertisers have been quick to switch budgets to match. Group M predicts U.K. internet ad spend will overtake TV in 2009. (Click here for article.) In the U.S., both TV viewing and online use have increased during the past five years (with TV holding the lion’s share of media time), but advertisers appear to have been more reluctant to move budgets online.
Of course it is true that young people are much more likely than their parents to value and use online and mobile media. But for now they still watch a lot of TV. So while at some point we are going to have to find alternatives to television as a means of brand building, that point may be a long way off.
What is apparent is that new media alternatives are not the silver bullet that some have made them out to be. Nor are they necessarily a cheap alternative. The logistics and cost involved in dealing with multiple agencies and planning and buying different media must chew into that budget pretty quickly. Even with a coordinated approach, it is tough to duplicate the mass reach of TV using a combination of alternative new channels. And while these media lend themselves to direct response, do they really replicate the brand-building power of TV? My gut reaction is no.
So what do you think? Is it a case of “TV is dead, long live TV”? Are senior marketers disillusioned with new media? And is my gut right or wrong? Please share your thoughts on the new media dilemma.
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August 22nd, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Given the Yahoo!/Intel announcement, and various VOD developments, it is surely only a matter of time before the TV and the Internet are one and the same?
For me, online only campaigns can work when there is a tightly defined target who can both engage with and propagate messages. But for mass reach and communal events central to our lives and conversations, TV is miles ahead
August 24th, 2008 at 3:23 am
Nigel,
Great post. Marketing is not getting any easier…we live in an AND world today. TV has a role to play and so does new media. While new media is taking off and becoming more important to the marketing mix (especially for Gen Y) we cannot ignore the fact that a large portion of the population simply plops down & turns on the tube after work. Indeed, many are simply tired of looking at a computer screen all day. All the fragmentation makes our lives harder, but it is certainly more fun than just going the same ole’ motions campaign after campaign!
–Ryan Jones
August 24th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Nigel -
I write and talk about the 50+ market - so my comment here addresses that demo.
I tell my clients that the best thing to happen to traditional advertising is the web. A JWT survey revealed that eighty-nine percent of Baby Boomers, if they like a print ad and were interested in the product, make mental notes to visit the product’s web site. The numbers aren’t much different for TV. Other studies have different results - but there is always a strong connection between print/TV and vetting the product by visiting the product web site.
In effect - what you’re buying with a print ad is a five, ten, fifteen, fifty page virtual insert - with videos and any sort of marketing fodder you want to stuff in there. With a 15/30 TV spot you’re buying a virtual infomercial. Off they go to the web if the commercial is effective.
You could say that the best thing to happen to new media is old media.
You were “exaggerating for effect” in a paragraph of your post. This excerpt from my book exaggerates for effect:
When it all comes out in the wash, WOMM will be the best thing to happen to (silly retronym ahead) traditional advertising. Pretty soon, consumers won’t believe anybody - even their best friends. They’ll realize that they receive the most honest and straightforward information about a product or service from a TV commercial, radio spot, print ad, direct marketing collateral, or product web site. At least we don’t lie about who we are and why we’re saying what we’re saying.
Remember this: Advertising didn’t die with the invention of the telephone.
August 25th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Thanks for the comments, much appreciated.
Yes, I was exaggerating for effect, partly because everyone so keen to sell their new media solution does so too!
While you all point to the synergy between online and offline media, I have to say I like Ryan’s succinct comment about living in an “AND world.” It is far more complex than in days gone by but it offers just as many opportunities as challenges.
Nigel
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:02 am
As always an interesting post Nigel.
Pretty well any media will produce an effect, but, of course, there are also synergies associated with different media formuli. It seems to me meanningless to try to define the “effect” of any medium when used independently. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
The task is to prioritise media routes in the context of different campaigns with different objectives and draw a line above the point where the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Bearing in mind this is not just about achieving volume responses/results, we are looking for maximum % return on investment. However, even with today’s computing power, it seems unlikely that we could model all the options, which is why media planning remains, at least in part, empirical.
We also have to beware of the risk of becomming media “Jacks” - using everything, but failing, because our resources are spread too thinly, to fully exploit anything.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
The question of forward vs back leaning media isn’t so much a battle about the number of eyeballs as it is about being able to measure and deliver targeted messages.
Google’s success in the market strikes at the very core of this inflection point as they continue to show how (with what they define in their media) offer/message relevance drives consumer response.
Now fast forward a few years and with Video on Demand bolted onto the behavioral inferences gleaned from the cookie crumbs we all leave behind (perhaps the social graph added on for good measure) and you get a sense of why there is such a scramble in the marketing and advertising communities.
What remains to be seen is if advertisers/marketers learn how to create compelling customized messages to fully leverage their newfound outreach ability, let alone close the metric loop through to purchase.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:31 am
Hi Miro, thanks for the comment, much appreciated.
I think your final question is the fundamental one. I have no doubt that technology will allow us to do what you suggest but will we be able to leverage it effectively? It seems likely that what the technology offers in terms of targeting may be lost in “dumbed down” creative.
The reason that Google works is because it reaches people for who the info is immediately relevant. What it does not do is seed ideas which are not of immediate relevance but will be. In other words brand building is completely ignored.
Nigel
September 8th, 2008 at 7:20 am
yeah verily
I was heartened after reading an interesting post at Occam’s razor which started to talk of the value of pan session metrics.
Perhaps when this ‘evolutionary’ analytic mindset/approach takes root with the google-ish crowd we will start to see movement toward campaign metrics, campaign ROI’s instead of the “Immediate” visit metrics
Cheers
Miro