Digital Yes! But Too Much of a Good Thing No!

As a futurist writer my Media Science Newsletter 19791999 laid down the blueprints for digital And we reported on Compuserve and Prodigy the early experiments in online advertising for which I also consulted At the formation meeting of the IAB I was the Keynote Speaker At the first meeting of the World Wide Web Consortium I was there with Jim Spaeth representing the ad industry Iamp8217ve consulted for Google Meta and Amazon I helped Andrew Susman create the great medium of digital branded content I consulted for British Telecom on a project that anticipated the iPhone until Apple beat us to the finish line I would be the last person to say that digital is not a great mediumBut we have gone too far in putting too many of our eggs in that one basket Iamp8217m talking about advertising investmentsAdvertising can serve as a reminder function to people who already buy your brand and give them more reasons to keep buying your brand but if you understand the vital importance of brand growth amp8211 Druckeramp8217s imperative to gain new users for your brand amp8211 then you must use advertising properly in order to activate that conversion function where you actually convert a nonuser to a user of your brandThe word amp8220conversionamp8221 today is used to mean any sale and sometimes used to mean any action at all but the original meaning is limited to true conversions from nonuser of the brand to user of the brand periodThis is what causes brand growthI first saw the deficiency of digital display and online video in a TRA study done for a CPG client which revealed that TV had more than 6X the sales effect of digital TV was 3X stronger in bringing in newtobrand customers Homes reached by both media types did about 20 better both in overall sales and in gaining new users than homes reached only by TV Conclusion Use both media types with more of TV than digitalSoon thereafter this was found to be the case by the ARF in its Ground Truth How Advertising Works study based on 5000 MMM studies around the world In 2015 ARF announced that the optimal mix was 78 TV to 22 digital Here is that ARF slide from 2015In 2023 then Executive Vice President FOX Corp Audrey Steele and I presented to an ARF annual conference the results of a tenyear study which covered 3 trillion in sales and 48 billion in adspend The MMM part of the study showed that digital was overspent to the degree that the next million dollars invested would not have an ROI payback The raw sales data IRI Polk NPD without any modeling whatsoever simply showed that brand growth was going down across the CPG Auto and QSR industries during the period 20142023 and that the apparent cause was the shift to digital This is what that looked likeI had hoped the industry would see the urgency of shifting dollars back into television But the industry was looking at the world through its oversimplification lens and could only see that linear TV usage was declining everyone was proudly selfdescribing as Digital First and everyone assumed that young people were not reachable at all by television and that all impressions have about the same effectThe main point is that all impressions do NOT have the same effect 40 companies measuring attention agree that most digital ad exposures last about a second or less some of the better ones in the best environments get almost five seconds of screen time with less than that of actual attention OK for reminder ads for your current users but not really a good use of money if you want brand growth ie talking people who have never bought your brand before into buying it Try doing that in less than five secondsNow Dr Augustine Fou has done a comprehensive study based on public SEC filings released on LinkedIn just a few days ago on February 23 2026 entitled amp8220How Brands DIDNamp8217T Grow amp8211 The Need For Digital Rebalancingamp8221 His opening sentence reads amp8220We now have 15 years of revenue data that shows some of the largest advertisers in the US simply didnamp8217t grow low to negative 15year CAGR compound annual growth rate despite breathlessly shifting ad budgets into digitalamp8221Aug as Andrew Susman and I call him credits a prior report by Michael Farmer as his inspiration for writing the article He quotes Michael amp8220Thirty out of the top sixty advertisers in the US grew collectively at only 07 per year for the past 15 yearsamp8221 Michael then points out that these thirty advertisers all grew at a rate which was below the rate of GDP inflation growth over the same period which was 21In Augamp8217s article How Brands DIDN39T Grow The Need for Digital Rebalancing you will see comparisons within verticals of brands that grew vs didnamp8217t grow and how the percent of adspend allocated to digital vs TV lines up to prove his caseIf you have shifted spending out of television and into digital and if you are not growing your brand as fast as the CEO and stockholders would like this would be a good time to shift back a meaningful chunk Use this link to maximize target reach at the least cost across all of your media types measured by Nielsen ONE linear CTV mobile computer Youamp8217ll recall that Nielsen is one of my consulting clientsIn both TV and digital use RMT Resonance Mapping Technology to increase sales effects by maximizing the harmony and synchrony of the media environments with the audiences targeted with the specific ads you are using This simple HUMAN consideration will make the consumeramp8217s experience with your ads far more pleasurable and they will become more willing to watch and consider your messaging Here are theamp160proofs of the latter statementWithin digital the strongest plays are premium streaming branded content retail media networks RMNs carefully chosen CreatorsInfluencers carefully chosen podcasts and programmatic CTV aimed at people whose motivations line up with your ads using RMT Although it is tempting to get discounts for piling money into the big walled gardens you will get the best brand growth per dollar by dispersing your campaigns across as many platforms and publishers as possible while maintaining efficiencies reaching the right targets and using specific content contexts that psychologically match your ads another shameless plug for amp8220myamp8221 company RMT because I strongly believe in itHere are a few slides going back a few years which I referred to in my article above the bottom slide was presented by FOX at the 2023 ARF AxS Conferenceamp160amp160amp160Building HighPerforming TeamsOur new podcast explores the topic of Being in the Inbetween Phase a liminal stage of growth when we can feel disoriented lonelyamp160or frustrated and why itamp8217s also a powerful indicator that real growth is happeningamp160Rather than rushing to amp8220fixamp8221 the discomfort this episode invites listeners to slow down listen more deeply to themselves and learn how to navigate uncertainty with trust patience and selfawarenessThis monthamp8217s podcast length is amp877646 minutes Watch the VideoPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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Digital Yes! But Too Much of a Good Thing No!

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