TV Is a Better Media Buy Than It Ever Has Been. Here's the Evidence.

Studies have shown that TV has higher ROI than digital display overcoming TVamp8217s CPM disadvantage For example Nielsen NC Solutions shows that after making up for its higher CPM linear TV doubles the ROI of digital display meaning it must have six to ten times the selling power ignoring cost Nevertheless the bulk of marketers today are betting on digital display as a solid replacement for billions of dollars that would have gone into TV had digital never existedThus it seems cosmic timing that the authors from the Marketing Accountability Standards Board a nonprofit Loyola Marymount University MSW Research and The Walt Disney Company came out with a powerful study in the Advertising Research Foundation39s ARF39s Journal of Advertising Research in December that has a strong bearing on this subject The paper both compiles preexisting ARF research and provides original research in which 7500 marketing mix modeling studies 30 years of advertising test results and quotNielsen Buyquot monthtomonth brand sales share change data are metaanalyzedBecause the sample of cases goes back in time to 1980 it is possible to track the change in the sales effectiveness of television advertising over more than four decades What it shows is that linear television generates about 20 more sales per GRP now than it did back then A large part of the reason for this is that each GRP now represents 45 more US homespopulation now than it did in 1980TV in a realistic sense is an even better buy now than it ever has been Somehow the sellers did not figure the population growth into their pricing adequately or psychological negotiation factors made that pragmatically impossibleBack in the beginning the early 1950s before my time the catchphrase had been quotcans flying off shelvesquot to describe the unprecedented sales impact that television had when first added to the advertising media mix It was not hard to quottickle outquot the effects of TV they were as clear as the sales impacts of coupons were in the 1980s Except that TV made a profit for the brandTheamp160MASB paper cites ARF 2016 research which rolled up over 5000 marketing mix modeling studies and concluded that the optimal mix at that time 5 years ago was 75 traditional25 digital average across all verticals representedThatamp8217s just about what we found in the FOX BHC SMI study covering most of the past five yearsYet today SMI data show that US national advertisers across all verticals have allocated only 47 to TV including its digital forms versus 53 to digital more than 90 of it being static display not sight sound and motionWhy would so many marketers totally ignore advice from sciencebased nonprofit organizations not to mention from quotcommon sensequotThe main point of the MASB study is to show that pretesting the persuasion power of TV ads has been a reliable tool in making television such a foundational partner for the growth of brands with an unbroken success record They propose an idea which comes back from time to time and is worth general adoption Persuasion Rating Points amp8211 the copy pretest scores used as weights on GRPs PRPs would cause greater use of the more powerful ads in the rotation pool and could be activated programmaticallyThe most exciting table to me in the report shows the relationship between pretest scores and brand sales share changes Note that high scoring ads in pretest show positive Nielsen market share effects in 100 of cases for the top two groupingsamp160Digital display is so cheap advertisers have tended to skip pretesting and just test in the real world This is part of the reason that there is a digital advertising bubble today like too much in subprime mortgages in 2008This is not to say that some digital display has exceptionally high ROI Good creative even if not pretested and sharp media selection can make any media type work and all media types working together is better than any other strategyBut we have drained too much out of TV for our own good And the proper pretesting of advertising can always be made to pay for itself These are two slapyourforehead lessons that will continue to be ignored only by the illfatedClick 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 MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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TV Is a Better Media Buy Than It Ever Has Been. Here's the Evidence.

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Bill Harvey

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TV Is a Better Media Buy Than It Ever Has Been. Here's the Evidence.

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