TV, always the centre of attention

So I’ve just been reading another great article on the effectiveness of TV from the highly reputable Millward Brown, here’s the link, http://www.millwardbrown.com/Global/Blog/Post/2011-04-18/It-s-a-360-world-but-marketers-can-ill-afford-to-leave-TV-out-of-the-media-mix.aspx with a great response by Tess Alps.

 

I often have this debate with my clients that when measuring the effectiveness of TV you have to look at everything not each media individually. This is why you would never find TV being sold on a Per enquiry deal because it will always increase your responses across all the Media you use, even after the TV campaign has finished. I’ve looked after in the past some national DRTV advertisers spending in excess of 10 million a year, and they always looked at the whole picture and is the reason TV was always their lead medium.

 

In fact recently I was having a conversation with a DRTV advertiser and we were discussing his cost pre response for TV and how it was the highest of all his media but he also said that when he wasn’t on TV all his cost per response went up massively and so he couldn’t afford to drop it. I even had to stop myself from laughing when he still tried to tell me that his Google cost per response was so massively cheap compared to TV. Yet when I asked how he bought it nationally yet he only had responses from his TV regions, how he could contribute the cost of response to Google when it was quite clear that it was because viewers were responding to the TV ads, just not through his TV measurement of a free phone number.

 

It just goes to show, if you’re not looking at the whole picture you’ll miss the point. TV is still the most watched Medium and most engaging but that doesn’t mean viewers will respond in the traditional way of calling a free phone service, or may not even respond immediately, but when they do respond it will be because the viewer has remembers the TV advert or that they saw them on TV, and through that they have a higher opinion of that advertiser through brand fame and as TV is still seen as the most expensive medium even though the reality is quite different.

PVR’s or Personal Video Recorders the so called nemesis of the traditional TV spot or so we’re led to believe.

I’ve just been reading this great article on PVR’s and thought I would share it with you all.

 

http://www.tvgenius.net/blog/2011/04/08/dvrs-impacting-viewing-habits

 

I come across this a lot when chatting to advertisers for the first time about TV and it’s great to see that once again the death of TV has been exaggerated. I could put money on the fact that at some point in a meeting an advertiser would say to me, “But people don’t watch the ads anymore, they just fast forward them, that’s what I always do”, even though previously they’ll have just said to me, “I love the new Compare the market ad, makes me laugh every time” and then I have to remind them but didn’t you just say you saw the new compare the market ad? So you must watch some ads?

 

It’s quite common that people have an impression of themselves and how they interact with the people and world around them, that isn’t necessarily the reality. I remember when I was still in sixth form many years ago and fancied myself as a Physio and so had been given a work experience at the local hospital and it was there I first learnt this observation.

 

We had a patient who had fallen down some stairs, when we asked what had happened he explained how he had been minding his own business and lost his footing on the stairs and fell. The Physio made notes and put them down but I noticed at the time they used a section on their notes that referred that this was the patients account of what happened, when I asked why they differentiated that it was the patients version of events they told me that it was because it was often the case that people will tell you what they think happened but not what actually happened as in this case the patient whom we had done blood test etc on had actually been drunk at the time of his fall and so most likely had been the result of their injury.

 

It’s the same across anything in life often our impression of an event is not actually the reality, it’s not that we purposefully lie of exaggerate it’s just our memory is selective and so we don’t necessarily remember every thing that happens over the course of our day, otherwise our tiny little heads might explode.

 

And when it comes to advertising, thing’s are no different. TV advertising in my view is the most memorable form of advertising yet if you asked people if they watch the ads they would generally give you a variety of answers from Yes (my personal favourite) to No I fast forward them, yet if you asked the same people who said no what their favourite advert is that they saw recently they would easily in the same breath recall an advert.

 

It may be that sometimes they do fast forward the ads, that’s when they’re actually watching a recorded programme, because remember you can’t fast forward live viewing, at least not yet. But because they do it sometimes it creates a false impression to themselves that they always fast forward the ads when that not actually true.

 

It’s also worth noting that due to TV being measured by BARB they now account for PVR viewing. Meaning if you fast forward an ad break you’re not classed as a viewer, and advertisers only pay for those who view the ads. So recently I might have said to a local advertiser, “500,000 saw your first advert go out on Tyne Tees last night” That means 500, 000 adults watched the ad, anyone else who fast forwarded the break made a cuppa etc were not counted as a viewer. SIMPLES.