Household Income… The Only Metric That Matters? - Mike Shaw - MediaBizBlogger

Is HH income the only metric that matters? Do advertisers have any choice but to concentrate their media messaging against HH's with at least $50K in income? Is there any brand manager who is going to accept a media communications strategy that delivers more impressions next year in the under $50K level? Won't every media plan, for every media an advertiser buys, be judged on whether it delivers a more upscale audience than it did a year ago?

In the U.S. about 50% of HH's have an income of $50K or more. In Adult 18-49HH's, 62% of the audience has an income of $50K or more, and this is one of the reasons advertisers still covet the A18-49 demo; they have more money to spend! So, why does it matter whether the HH income is above or below $50K? Well, let's think about how people are living today and the choices they have to make for their family each and every day. Let's suppose our HH income is $35K: after taxes I have around $2,300 per month for my family of four to live on. $2,300 a month! And there's a lot to cover here; rent, car, insurance, food, clothes, TV, phone, you get the point. This family is making different choices when it comes to brands and the premium price attached to those brands. This family has gone private label, because they had to - they're buying used cars because they have to. This family does not represent an advertiser's best consumer prospect for most of the goods and services being advertised on television today.

All of this puts enormous pressure on the advertiser to focus their advertising message on the audience that is still able to buy their brands; in this example $50K and above, but for many advertisers it's $100K or $150K and above. The reason there is so much pressure on the advertiser now is because of the media choices that have been made for the last 10 years which, in large part, have been based on delivering the lowest A18-49 CPM, regardless of the income level that was ultimately delivered. That strategy only works if your competition does the same thing, which is pretty unlikely.

Getting the right price matters, but only if you're getting the right media. This year, getting the right media is all about delivering your message to HH's with enough income to buy your brand or product. A GRP is a GRP? Hardly.

Mike Shaw is president, Sales and Marketing, ABC Television Network. He is responsible for sales and integrated marketing efforts for all dayparts of the ABC Television Network, including ABC Primetime, ABC Daytime, ABC News, ABC Late-Night, ABC Interactive and Sales Development. He also oversees Disney/ABC Unlimited, the cross-platform sales unit of the Walt Disney Company, as well as SoapNet.