Ok, ok, quiet down everyone. All those who have predicted the demise of television advertising raise your hand. You know who you are, the ones who have forecast doom and gloom for television advertising in the digital age for years now. You’ve been predicting that social media, mobile advertising, online advertising and digital advertising in general will spell the end of our near and dear friend – the television when it comes to advertising.
This article is directly squarely at you or as we say in Philly – at yous. (Yes I know the grammar police will be after me but please pardon my brief colloquialism if you will.
If television advertising is on its death bed how do you explain the fact that almost two-thirds (62.4% to be precise) of all advertising dollars spent by the major media buyers was spent on television advertising?
The data, as Joe Mandese put it in his article on Media Post, was “the most empirical view yet of actual media-buying behavior among major ad agencies, because it is based on their actual buys, not the kind of estimates supplied by third-party syndicated researchers or industry analysts.”
In other words, the nearly 65% number is not some pie-in-the sky prediction here boys and girls, it’s a cold, hard fact. You know, the irrefutable kind of fact.
It’s A Multi-Screen World After All
With the advent of so many different screens – in addition to our dear friend TV that is, surely television must be getting lost in the smartphone, tablet, e-reader, etc., shuffle, right?
Surely consumers who use multiple screens throughout the course a given day – and that number is most assuredly rising, are more apt to prefer viewing an ad on a screen other than television, yes?
Well you may want to hold that thought.
According to results from a Microsoft Advertising survey conducted with Flamingo Research and Ipsos OTX, nearly three-quarters of multi-screen consumers are open to advertising on TV, compared to 57% on computers and 51% on tablets.
Let’s Get One Thing Straight
I am by no means professing my love for television advertising as the sole medium for any advertiser.
On the contrary for as anyone who has followed me knows that I am a huge proponent of integrated marketing or cross-channel marketing. Obviously digital channels like social media and online advertising must play a role given the world we live in. And there’s a reason I wrote late last year that Mobile Marketing (is) Too Large For Brands To Ignore.
You would be a complete fool not to realize our world is now a mobile one for all intents and purposes.
But there’s also a reason I wrote Why Brands Need To Treat Computer Screens Like TV Screens.
Television advertising is not going anywhere anytime soon. Period.
Ok TV-is-dead people, bring it on.
I’m waiting for you.
Sources: Media Post, Marketing Charts
Photo credit: ccharmon
Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred, Steve Olenski is a senior creative content strategist at Responsys, a leading global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions, and a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. He can be reached via Twitter, LinkedIn or Email.