An Open Letter to CEOs and CMOs -- You Can “Innovate” to a Fault

Having said that it is time for all television sellers and buyers to take a stand and hold client CMOs and CEOs accountable for their fixation with digital video and social media Within the overall media mix digital video and participation in key social media platforms play an important role but the following questions should be addressed1 Do they work2 How much is too much3 To what degree are responses to my digital investment being impacted by my investment in my television advertisingYou have probably asked yourself the first and second question and may even have implemented some systems to try and measure them The third question is likely asked far less frequently and has an equal impact on your ROI Together all three questions raise key issues that must be answered before the balance of ad dollars shifts to such a degree that the success of your brand is in jeopardyHaving traveled the past several weeks to visit both agency and media clients there seem to be some realities setting in Continually increasing dollars to digital video at some point grows frequency far faster than growing reach For example the movie category which is fairly committed to digital video is suffering from these issues thus negatively impacting the awareness for film releases According to industry executives that Iamp8217ve seen recently they specifically attribute this to shifting too many dollars away from TV a mass reach vehicle into digital a more intimate transactional vehicleIn addition to a severe reach issue there are other challenges that marketers face in digital video including1 Digital fraud2 Bots3 Viewability metricsAs marketers we know it is almost impossible to communicate any selling points in two seconds Yet the IAB is recommending an impression be counted when only 70 of an ad can be seen for 2 seconds and sound isnamp8217t necessary In television we count viewability when the entire ad is seen Also the most viewed professionally produced content online is TV showsAs for social media what metrics are being used to determine if it is working Not too long ago TV sellers made a stride forward by creating commercial pod ratings There is little debate about consumer affinity for Facebook Google and Twitter and they have leveraged their great brands to get audiences with CMOs and CEOs and turned that into thriving ad businesses but at what costHow much targeted reach can they amass in a day or a week What is their contribution to brand buildingFor the entire week of December 15th the total number of social actions for the top broadcast show The Voice ranked by social engagement according to Shareablee was 19M Not bad but the audience in an average minute of The Voice on NBC for the same week was 121M As you look further down the charts the 10th ranked show delivered 140K social actions amp8211 over a weekamp8217s period amp8211 but a TV audience of 95MGiven all the quality content and the abundance of choices television is better than ever for the consumer For advertisers television remains the best way to effectively target and communicate an ad message to key customers And it is still the most efficient way to build mass reach quickly and drive awareness To my movie and auto friends TV is vital to making your digital dollars more effective at driving actions and transactions The bottom line is television may not be a new solution but it remains the highly effective choiceFor fear of being considered a naysayer sometimes telling company leadership that they may have gone a bit overboard with amp8220innovationamp8221 isnamp8217t easy therefore I am here to take some of the heat off you We share a common goal and this is to see clients build their brands and sell their products to the fullest extent possibleThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageMediaBizBloggers management or associated bloggers

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An Open Letter to CEOs and CMOs -- You Can “Innovate” to a Fault

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Michael Teicher

Jon Miller | Cofounder Marketo, Engagio | The Gumball Machine is Broken - Rethinking B2B Marketing - By Mike Linton

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An Open Letter to CEOs and CMOs -- You Can “Innovate” to a Fault

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Michael Teicher

Jon Miller | Cofounder Marketo, Engagio | The Gumball Machine is Broken - Rethinking B2B Marketing - By Mike Linton

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