Report: Social Video Generates 70% As Much Reach As Linear TV, Fills In Demo 'Gaps'
- by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, June 3, 2021
For most traditional linear TV companies, social video generates about 70% as much reach as linear TV — and for Disney, the reach is nearly the same.
The 18-to-34 age segment generates more than half of social video consumption, versus just 10% of linear TV consumption.
Those 55 and older …
While it is true that "linear TV's " average commercial minute audience"is heavily oriented to older consumers as well as low brows, this does not define the reach of "linear TV". Rather it goes mainly to frequency. For example a typical branding TV campaign may generate a 60% four-week reach among all consumers but this actually translates into a 75% reach among among oldsters and a 50% reach among youger adults. If the average frequency is 3.0 overall---meaning the buy gets 180 GRPs, the corresponding figure for oldsters may be 3.5-4.0 while the younger is 2.5. Moreover, over a longer period of time---say two or three months, the reach gap between the younger and older will narrow with the latter building to about 75%. So average minute ratings can't be used as surrogates for reach. It is not true that the reach of most TV ad campaigns is mostly among old folks.
As for what any of this means, that's an easy one. Not much. We can't accept "raw" audience data from any source, which assumes viewership of ad messages simply because the ad appears on the user's screen. What percent of Nielsen's "average commercial minute audience" actually watches an average commercial? What percentage of social media's average "impression" audience actually watches the message?