• by July 5, 2005

TVB: IS RAEL FOR REAL? - It's nice to know we can take a week off from the hustle and bustle of Media Town and that when we return, nothing much will have changed. Experts are still downgrading projections for 2005 ad spending. The Internet continues to soar, along with the price of Google's shares. And the Television Bureau of Advertising continues to punch holes in the research claims of broadcast TV rivals. But unlike its last research expose, which attacked what the TVB described as the shoddy methods and wrong-minded conclusions of a Turner Broadcasting comparison of broadcast and cable TV ratings trends, this time the TVB is taking shots at some broadcast brethren - the radio kind.

Instead of demonstrating the return on investment of radio advertising, as it purported to, a recent study from the Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab (RAEL) really demonstrates the power of TV advertising counters the TVB. The study, which utilized a variety of case studies comparing the sales results of different media buys - radio in presence of TV, radio in absence of TV, TV in presence of radio, and TV in absence of radio - actually demonstrates the superior ROI of TV, according to the TVB's investigation.

"The highest estimated sales lift (7.7 percent) was delivered by TV in absence of incremental radio. The lowest was delivered by radio in absence of TV (3.6 percent)," states the TVB. "Simply put, the best results were produced by TV with the least radio, the worst were produced by radio by itself."

Interestingly, the TV ad bureaucrats claim TV comes out the winner even though the radio study utilized questionable methods to stack the deck in its favor, including:

* Comparing radio overall to national television, and leaving local TV out of the mix.

* Utilizing national TV costs in the analysis, which "have no foundation in actual local market TV pricing."

* Studying the results of four packaged goods brands (which currently use network radio) in four very small markets.

Gee, you'd think that if the radio folk were going to bother mixing apples and oranges they'd at least make sure their own fruit looked riper by comparison.