Commentary

Why Television is Still King

by Joe Marchese , October 12, 2010

The Economist has a great overview of the ad industry landscape titled "The return of advertising: The box rocks." The story paints a very hopeful picture, not only that ad dollars are coming back, but that those ad dollars might just be an indicator of the overall economy bouncing back. Aside from the wishful thinking around the economy bounce back, the most interesting part of the column is the direct call-out to the Internet's utter lack of a system of advertising to rival television: "Search engines and online banners are not nearly so good at making people aware of new products. Nor do they offer emotional experiences. Television's ability to build brands by surrounding adverts with gripping content is unsurpassed."

And in the end, this is digital media's greatest challenge. The Internet has simply not created a system for engaging consumers in advertising at scale in a way that achieves the goals of major brand marketers, especially around discovery and story-telling. Television enables marketers to achieve these goals by transferring consumer attention at scale to a rich-media experience that can be designed to meet their specific goals. Banners and search simply don't work this way, leaving marketers struggling to leverage the Internet to achieve brand objectives, despite a massive consumer audience. This has led brands to search for alternative methods to "buying media" and a never-ending string of attempts at creating content that consumers will seek out AND still deliver a brand message, which still simply will not scale.

While, as The Economist piece points out, people do spend an awe-inspiring amount of time consuming content through television, time spent is not the differentiator between television and the Internet. From an advertiser's perspective, the differentiator is that television has created a system for delivering advertising in a way that fits with the medium and engages consumers, giving advertisements the ability to create discovery and tell stories. The Internet has the potential to offer marketers the same ability, but simply needs a better system than banners and search.

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advertising, commentary, tv

15 comments about "Why Television is Still King".

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Drew Williamson from State Bar of Arizona, October 12, 2010 at 1:26 p.m.
I think the traditional media channels are going to recover in the short-term. However, television is in for a big revolution as the internet disintermediates the owners of local television stations.
TV programming on demand via the web is going to be a huge shock to the existing television business model.
Reply

Douglas Ferguson from College of Charleston, October 12, 2010 at 1:33 p.m.

Nary a word in your cheerleading piece, Joe, about the DVR, which is now found in 40 percent of TV homes, a tipping point penetration for sure. The Economist article and your seemingly blind acceptance deny what we know about the discontinuous way people watch TV in 2010, say nothing about their children who live inside the world of social media, video games, and YouTube. Go read Diane Mermigas' thought-provoking analysis today. And no more whistling in the dark, please.

Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, October 12, 2010 at 2:12 p.m.

The box or the programming the medium delivers most? Long form professional programs or short snippets of uTubes ?

Neal Bell from White Rock Media, LLC, October 12, 2010 at 2:37 p.m.

Joe,

I totally agree with this post (and it's title), but must say that the "King's" crown is becoming a bit tarnished. Even though television advertising is still capable of delivering more meaningful connections for advertisers than most other tactics, there are numerous forces eroding this ability.

Whether it is DVRs, Apple TV, YouTube, DirectTV, Cell phones, iPads, iPods, iPhones, etc., the media landscape has never been more fragmented.

So, while TV still aggregates more eyeballs than anything else, and advertising in this medium is (on average) the most compelling form of advertising, the relative VALUE of television advertising continues to erode, and it is being replaced with nothing comparable.

I know this sounds very much like Bob Garfield's Chaos Scenario (worth reading, by the way), but I think it is true.

The main thing TV has going for it is the social contract it has always had with viewers - the one that says every so often we're going to pause and play a few ads for you. TV can run ads without ticking off too many people. This contract doesn't exist in the digital/online world today, but I believe it must happen in order for all of the world's content to get monetized in a sustainable way.

My fear for local advertisers (the clients my firm focuses on) is that local broadcasters' business models become broken, without viable alternatives to replace them.

Rufus Dogg from DogWalkBlog, October 12, 2010 at 3:41 p.m.

Even simpler. People want to eat, but few want to join the hunt. The Internet is a hunting expedition; TV is the feast someone else hunted down, gutted, dressed and roasted for you. No greater than that.

Tom Cunniff from Combe Incorporated, October 12, 2010 at 4:21 p.m.

No matter how many times the digerati shout that TV is dead, like Abe Vigoda it stubbornly refuses to go along with that prediction.

What IS happening is that mass audiences are continuing to fragment. Digital is accelerating that process, and mobile will make it worse in the near-term. If we're honest, I don't think any of us are entirely certain where this all ends.

Until it all shakes out (which will take a long time), we need to all get a grip on how Paid, Owned and Earned work for our brands and do our best to strike the right balance.

The most important word or concept for the next decade is not "digital". It's "integration".

Dave Mcilroy from PlayFullScreen, October 12, 2010 at 4:48 p.m.

Hubris: TV proponents are always the last to see the forest for the trees. RIAA threatened to put Grandma in jail with no real results. Technology rolls on, the consumer rules and no crystal ball gazing will change that. The shift is slow and steady. One thing is certain: This is is definitely not your grandma's cable access market any more.

Tim Rosini from Duncan Mcintosh, October 12, 2010 at 5:30 p.m.

We should all know by now that the media ladnscape and technology providing this landscape changes more rapidly then we can keep up with. by the time all the studies come out, data is banked, and ideas are formed, already the landscape will be shifting. just as we were catching up to the internet...smart phones took off, and certian social applications via the web were booming. Just as we are catching up to the smart phones and realizing their potential along the social application(facebook, etc) landscape itself is changing from strictly a buddy to buddy connection, to a more news, corportation, central hub for the masses activity site, the next wave hits. Now the i-pad and smaller digital media device is becoming the next tide in the landscape change. the point is the data and research barely can keep up to the reality of technology and changing landscape of media outlets and interactions, we all get sucked up in teh undertow... Tv might always have a place in our immediate consumer and information outlets, but who knwos what the face of it will look like 5 years from now.

Mark Burrell from Tongal, October 12, 2010 at 5:30 p.m.

Sorry for the late reply, I was just paying attention to other stuff online during one of 15 hours a day while my DVR'd TV shows play in the background:) What were ya'll talking about?

http://bit.ly/9Rnpj2

Mike Einstein from the Brothers Einstein, October 13, 2010 at 8:35 a.m.

Superbowl Sunday should dispel any doubts about who's king.

Nick Drew from Yahoo Canada, October 13, 2010 at 10:45 a.m.

I read this Economist article on a flight over the weekend, and it made me so frustrated I nearly shouted at a stewardess. (quite what she would have been able to do to make the article better, I'm not sure). As one of many people who's worked both in online and offline media, it struck me that it was written by someone who doesn't know online very well, with a particular pre-agreed angle to support.
The truth is that if online banners can be accused of not making people aware of new products, the majority of the blame can be laid at the feet of the marketers. If I spent $5,000 on a TV campaign, supported with perhaps $100,000 in print, I could justifiably claim that TV isn't very good at making people aware of my campaign. Polling showed that people didn't remember my ad, my tagline or want my product. Rather than claiming that TV is a dead medium, however, the brighter marketer would see that $5k will buy 1 30s ad on one network, and have something like a 10% reach of the audience - far less than is required to achieve any kind of shift in awareness, favourability or recall.
And yet when it comes to online, this is precisely what we see - many brands are spending frugally online, and claiming that the internet just isn't working for them, completely ignoring the fact that the internet is a big medium. One can't just spread $5k around very thinly and complain that it's not working.

As for the claim that online advertising doesn't offer emotional experiences, I mean, how wrong can you get? Which is more engaging - an ad that builds a story, pictures the brand in your life, how it improves your situation and emotional wellbeing, all supported by all the information you require, and the voices of consumers like you who've used it and found it to be great; or a guy shouting at you that you must ring this number now, quick, before Jeopardy starts?
As online marketers, we can obviously see some salient points in this somewhat wrong-headed article; as intelligent marketers, we also know where to stop taking it as gospel and use our own experience and judgment.

Joe Marchese, October 13, 2010 at 11:47 a.m.

Nick - Frustrated much? Seriously, I am very glad you didn't yell at the stewardess (i believe they are flight attendants now).

Okay, now take a deep breath and try to open your mind beyond your frustrations, because it will make it very hard to understand your would be clients if all you can think is that they are so stupid they don't understand the difference between spending $5k and $100k and the impact on results of surveys (really?).

Just to set a couple things straight. First, I am in the online advertising business, and I have consistently dealt with the same frustrations you are expressing. But the facts are the facts. Television is still king, not because The Economist or I say it is, but because the budgets say they are. And no matter how made you get at me or random stewardesses, it's not changing in it's current form. Instead of frustration, and assuming marketers are stupid for how they spend their money, perhaps we should spend a little more time thinking about what we can do better and what lessons we can learn from that "dumb old media" that, by the way, dominates client spending.

Of course, you could just get angry and see how that works out.

Kathy Sharpe from Resonate Networks, October 13, 2010 at 2:45 p.m.

Television remains easier to plan and buy and it is hard to imagine giving birth to a new brand just using social.However as Internet advertising has taught clients and their procurement officers accountability/ROI, so it will lose its head.

Fraser E from Opinions expressed herein are solely my own, October 19, 2010 at 11:43 p.m.

Drew, I think you're 100% correct about the disintermediation, but I'll take it a step further: It's going to be a huge shock to the entire video creation, production, distribution, and consumption models, as the revenue stream that pays for the creation and production goes away, with no replacement in sight.

Fraser E from Opinions expressed herein are solely my own, October 20, 2010 at 10:49 a.m.

Drew, I think you're spot-on with your thoughts about disintermediation, but I think it'll go further than just being a shock to the TV business model. The sharp reduction of revenue stream without any sizable replacement is going to shock the creative production side, leaving viewers of disintermediated video without much free professional content to consume.