When TV Ads Chase Digital Eyeballs
Take a guess: What’s the fastest-growing sector in TV advertising? Here’s a hint: It probably isn’t what you think it is.
It’s not CPG, or auto, or retail. In fact, it’s digital — companies like Amazon, MobileStrike, eBay, and Google. It’s the companies whose business is driven through targeting and retargeting, app installs, shopping carts, and — yes — serving ads themselves. According to Nielsen AdViews data, online brands are growing their US television spend significantly faster than other advertisers: 17% growth vs. 4% growth overall year-over-year. And the Video Advertising Bureau has found that over the past 5 years, TV advertising by “pure play” digital brands has increased by a third.
What’s significant about this? It’s that these are the companies that are obsessed with data and results. They’re the ones that are ROI-obsessed in terms of clickthroughs and direct response campaigns. They know what it means when consumers pay attention, and they know what it means to get attention and results. And they’re not just buying TV ads; they’re buying more of them.
This isn’t something crazy, or part of a bigger master plan with a ton of arcane steps that we’ll never understand unless we work for the company in question. More likely, it’s the simple fact that smart dollars seek out the best return on investment. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one.
So, consider this: What if the best return on investment means the most attention for dollars spent? Makes sense, right? What if, bias aside, the best place to spend money is the place that gives you the best chance to deliver your message and tell your story? Sexy or not, that is commercials right now. And even though it isn’t always easy to measure, it is actually pretty intuitive. The 30-second commercial is the best medium for achieving true brand awareness that spurs the consumer to action, and a company that’s looking to drive digital clicks has a particularly compelling reason to want to achieve those goals.
TV has succeeded in spite of not having the same delivery precision as digital ads because the measurements that count — product familiarity, brand equity shifts, sales, and “selling dreams” — have consistently shown that TV works. A key part of how it works is in converting the undecided, not just preaching to the prior-purchase choir of narrowly defined targets. Content targeting to broader purchase demographics has proven effective for years, and the development of tools and insights that better plan and measure TV’s influence in the media mix have made it more effective than ever.
Media plans now have the potential to encompass far more than they used to. In addition to the basic TV buy, a media package with a major network can now encompass interactive digital ads, social media, virtual reality promotions, and deep product placement. Each of these has its own advantages — there are different kinds of human attention, after all. You’re paying a different kind of attention to an ad on Facebook or a glimpse of product placement in a show on Hulu than you are to a commercial break on TV. And data-driven companies like Amazon and Google have figured that out.
