TV is dead! TV is dead! TV is dead?
Avinash Kaushik
Chief Strategy Officer, BOD, Croud | Best-selling Author, Analytics.
Who's watching live TV?
Pretty much everyone, all the time!
It is sexy to believe TV is dying. Cable cords are being cut; Netflix has killed traditional TV, etc. etc. It is considered the word of God that Shout Advertising is dead, digital rocks, Conversation Marketing is da bomb.
All of the above is kind of right, but you'll be surprised at small that right is. Look at the chart below, no matter what he dimension TV never drops under 71%. Seventy. One. Percent! Male or Female. Young or old. High or low income.
We are not only watching pretty much all the TV content being aired, we are watching it on more devices and more of the time.
Yes, digital disruption is winning in small pockets. Yes, new ways of marketing and advertising and proving their worth. But both things are happening much, much, much slower than you might imagine. They continue to be (heartbreakingly) tiny parts of large company budgets (just10% for GM, http://goo.gl/dA3lik). The chart above explains why.
So what?
Make sure that at the highest level your media strategy is solving for And and not Or. TV and radio and Google and Email and x and y and z. It is silly to ask: "Should we do TV or digital?" "Should we invest in Facebook or advertise on TV?"
In the long run people and companies that get good at And will rule the world. People and companies that continue to have Or strategies will survive, for a lot longer than you and I might anticipate.
I'm going to make a controversial point now.
If you are a large company and you can only make Or decisions (that would be awful), choose TV. For the conceivable duration of your career, you might still have a more positive impact on your career (first!) and your business (second!).
I'm sure this is surprising coming from a Digital Marketing Evangelist, and the person who passionately advocates for Utility Marketing, for Owning audiences rather than Renting them. [Six glorious marketing Venn diagrams.] But it is important to keep reality in mind. Everything I champion and advocate works, it will get more and more important over time, but for now my recommendation is that it is a part of an And strategy and not Or.
Good luck! Long live TV! : )
Data source, along with many other helpful links to many other content consumption studies: http://goo.gl/JG1tEq
Photo: creative commons licensed (BY-NC-ND) flickr photo by nrtphotos
New Business Sales Development | Digital Marketing Certified | Web Analytics
7yThanks! Digging deeper with your data sources and content studies.
Passionate Leader, Experienced Digital Marketer and Audience Insights Aficionado .
8ySuch a wonderful , accurate and refreshing POV!
Digital Alignment for Your Assignment
9yI sell both television and digital advertising. Both work if done correctly. I love digital. I love the amazing things we can do. I love how you can target. I love all of it. Done right, its powerful. Done poorly, it sucks. But I can also say that television advertising still works the same as it did when I started 15 years ago. People forget, its not about the people you don't reach, its about the people you do reach. I can still reach the same amount of people now that I did 15 years ago. Heck, I have sold CBS, NBC, UPN, WB and even The CW and all of them worked for clients. 15 years ago it might have been show X, Y and the that I used to reach 1 million people over Q amount of time. Now its just a different set of shows that I use. But as long as the commercial is good, it works. Even with the DVR, Hulu and Netflix, I have not seen a drop off in the effectiveness of a TV campaign. But once again, the drop off in viewership has not been enough to stop me from reaching the same amount of people that I did 15 years ago.Not bias either way because I sell both and have for many years.
Turner Research Services (A Marketing Science Consultancy)
9yI feel it wise to keep in mind that a large proportion of Americans are over the age of 50, and this proportion will increase in the coming decades. These folks grew up on TV, they are used to TV, they expect TV. There is no way TV is dead or is going to die when advertisers can reach these consumers easily on the current platforms. Not to mention, older adults are not the cord-cutters. They are not the digital evangelists. Unlike younger adults, they are simply engaging in the type of content they have been conditioned to expect. Go ahead youngsters...push digital all day long, but don't come crying when you find it difficult to reach the largest, richest group in America.