• by David L. Smith , February 4, 2002

Last week over dinner at Pebble Beach, courtesy of Yahoo!, a number of Internet advertising folks got into a debate that seems fairly common these days. What can the Web do to compete with TV?

After all, the Web has sight, sound AND motion, and some day “real soon now” when significant broadband kicks in, will have mass penetration. It also has Interactivity that TV does not have (sure, ITV is on the way, but is anybody betting their 401K on it happening soon?). As we all know, this Interactivity not only makes it possible for consumers to get feedback or accomplish whatever they want to accomplish, it permits the advertiser to track consumer actions, optimize so that more consumers get what they are looking for and remarket to those who don’t purchase or participate right away. In short, the promise of the mid-90’s is coming to fruition in that we have a medium that does everything but slice, dice and do windows.

As a result, the concentration of industry research right now is on comparing the commercial efficacy of the Web to TV, in order to take dollars from TV. Is this a bad thing? No, not at all. Will it work? Not necessarily. Why not?

As we mentioned above, the Web does not yet have the penetration of TV in terms of its’ ubiquitousness and amount of usage. The result of this is that a single announcement, even roadblocked across a major site, will not have the reach of a single announcement on a TV effort. Not to mention the topic of hot discussion right now which is that we STILL do not have an acceptable measure of GRP’s, Reach, and Frequency that makes it even possible to compare with TV. So, what if the penetration of broadband grows to critical mass and we get the metrics thing straightened out. It should be easy to make the case, right? Wrong.

TV remains the most effective means of communicating a new product or idea that marketers have ever found. They don’t know the exact ROI and they can’t even prove exactly which levels of advertising work, although there is a lot of empirical evidence that advertisers and agencies believe in. It is a very elusive target to take on. We spend time with Web metrics to try to show the action that caused someone to actually purchase or take whatever action the marketer wants the consumer to take. And yet we cannot firmly establish which TV message or accumulation of TV caused someone to take the tube of toothpaste off the shelf at the supermarket. However, that toothpaste manufacturer KNOWS that if they stopped or lowered TV advertising, fewer people would take the tube of toothpaste off the shelf. Believe me, they have tried this and seen it happen. In one case I worked on, it took them years to get the business level back after such a test.

When the Web advocates talk about competing with TV, they are dealing with logic and reality. The fact is that they are battling perception. The perception that TV brought the marketer to the dance and that marketer is not going home with anyone else.

Other media have been up against the same situation and survived nicely. The best two cases in point are consumer magazines and cable TV.

Mass consumer magazines were dying in the late 1960’s. The love fest with TV, a fairly new medium at that time was such that major companies had taken all of their ad budgets and moved them into TV. Magazines, a medium that had survived on advertising for the 50+ years before, were literally dying. They tried to show how they had reach, consumer loyalty, were more upscale and had a number of other positive aspects, but it just did not work. Until they banded together and performed what is now known as the General Foods magazine test. This test, replicated by other advertisers from time to time since, but never done in the same depth, established a meaningful weight level of advertising behind magazines across a wide variety of brands on a local, test market basis. In those local markets, TV weight was reduced accordingly. Budget levels remained the same. This test went on for a year. In some cases, the TV/magazine combo performed about the same as all TV, but in most cases, the TV/magazine combo outperformed the TV only control. General Foods and many other marketers adjusted their media mixes and what followed were the new glory days of the magazine business. Sure, some magazines like Life (the first time it died), Look and The Saturday Evening Post dropped by the wayside, but women’s service magazines soared. And the new proven efficacy of magazines permitted many new categories to grow into market viability. With the exception of the current recession, which will result in an adjustment in the number of titles that has already started, the magazine industry has never been in better shape for the long haul relative to marketer confidence.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s another medium came along. Cable TV looked just like broadcast TV but like magazines was much more upscale. It did not have the critical mass to compete with broadcast. It was not being taken seriously. Until some smart cable TV reps talked some senior folks at Ted Bates into allocating 5% of their TV budgets into Cable TV across the board for all clients. How did they do this? They found a weakness that TV had that they could leverage. Seems that every place that Cable TV was strongest (the major markets), broadcast TV ratings suffered. The 5% allocation was proven to raise rating point levels in the major markets to the national average and felt to be a good investment. Other agencies and advertisers jumped on board and Cable TV proceeded downtown to become the factor that it is today.

So, how can the Web compete with TV? It can’t. But, I am certain that the bright minds involved with the Web can find a way to complement TV and come out with a better result for the marketer. This is where our emphasis should be. Right after we get Reach, Frequency and GRPs so that we can show them what we have and how it adds to TV. Then it is just a matter of analysis and testing to determine where the Web can shore up a TV weakness. A number of things are possibilities including
- Concentrating on targets the Web reaches better
- Attributes of value
- Balance light TV viewing
- Provide real Interactivity
- Communicate intricately with younger generations
- Allow communications of different copy points for low production cost

The list goes on.

Once we do this and successfully complement rather than compete with TV, the Web will have a permanent downtown address.

Karen T. McFee is Executive Vice President and David L. Smith is President of Mediasmith, Inc., the Integrated Solutions Media Agency based in San Francisco and New York. The can be reached at kmcfee@mediasmithinc.com and smith@mediasmithinc.com.