Newspapers thrived into the mid-20th century but with the advent of radio and then television, newspaper circulation began a slow but steady decline.
That decline has only been hastened by the advent of the internet, and the early years of the 21st century have seen the newspaper industry enter a kind of death spiral, with layoffs, bankruptcies and even the total shutdown of some publications being seen nationwide.
TV & Online – Frenemies?
It’s no secret that we are big believers in TV advertising. And as self-professed technology geeks, we also love the power of the Internet and online advertising. And as we have watched the explosive growth of online advertising, we have also seen the tensions between the two media grow. But recent research from Nielsen, reported by eMarketer confirms our belief that not only can the two media live peacefully, but when used together their effectiveness increases.
Specifically, Nielsen found that when a group of consumers were asked if they viewed a TV ad for a sports sedan, 50% recalled seeing it. Another group was shown the same ad across multiple screens (TV, computer, mobile phone and tablet), and when asked if they recalled seeing it, 74% said yes, 48% higher than just TV alone.
We think this reinforces the need for a well thought-out media campaign across multiple platforms.
Of course you should take a few factors into consideration when developing your media plan including:
- Using media consumption research to identify what media should be included in the mix.
- Testing different media mixes in different markets to be able to optimize the mix.
- Capitalize on the strengths of each medium when developing creative executions to harness the best results.
- Add in social media integration.
We’ve seen the success our clients have realized through an optimized media plan. And we’d love to hear your thoughts as well, whether you agree with us or not.
Home, Sweet Out-Of-Home
Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1089869
What do you think of when the term “Out-Of-Home Advertising” is brought up? Billboards, right? One of the oldest advertising mediums, and still effective. And while the presence of the newer digital boards has been increasing, the vast majority of the boards you’ll see look like the picture here.
But step back and consider that one reason for the growth of OOH ad expenditures (over $6.3 billion in 2011) has been the explosion of options other than billboards. If we has asked you to put together a list of OOH media, how many of the following would you have included?
- Billboards
- Mobile billboards
- Transit - bus & taxi signage, bus stops, subway stations, trains and tunnels
- Gas pumps
- Aerial
- Mall TV and signage
- Nightclub TV
- In-store ads
- Streetwash
And we would even argue that mobile and augmented reality could be considered forms of OOH advertising.
The advantages of OOH are primarily the focus on the fact that it captures consumer’s attention during periods of time when most other forms of media aren’t available; it can’t be ignored easily; its ability to do geographic targeting, and lastly, the literal huge impact strong placements can provide.
The largest drawbacks are the limited amount of time most viewers will be able to spend with the placement, the longer-term commitment required, production costs for larger campaigns and the general principal that it is not a stand-alone medium (although our hair salon client might disagree). Instead, OOH should be considered as another option in the media planning process.
Have you incorporated OOH into your media plan? We’d love to hear any thoughts or experiences you’ve had.
So Many Choices Under The Sun
Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/569804
Here’s a scary thought – the number of advertising platforms that advertisers and agencies have to choose from has grown from 8 in the 1970’s to over 100 today. These numbers come Patrick Quinn, CEO of PQ Media, a syndicated media research firm.
We’ve written about the need to consider a broad set of options when developing a media plan, and while we are aware of (and use) most of them, to see the number written in stone made us pause. How do you even begin to choose among them, much less implement a successful media campaign? Like anything else, you have to have a plan.
So what are the elements that go into the development of a successful media strategy?
First, who are you trying to talk to? Media consumption habits and corresponding degree of influence varies widely based on all sorts of demographic factors (and that’s before you consider any psychographic segmentation).
What about your creative executions? You’ve already chosen your creative agency and the development of your creative strategy is well underway. Your agency likely has certain preferred media channels that they have experience with (and others they don’t), and that expertise will guide their recommendations.
However, when it comes to creative, as we wrote in November 2011, media can help guide that process. Make sure you get your media agency involved early in the creative development process so you have as many options as possible.
What are your goals for the campaign? Customer acquisition, brand positioning, new product introduction? All of these will impact the selection of a media channel.
And finally, what’s your budget? While almost all media channels can be considered within any reasonably sized budget, there will be a few that rise to the top.
Choice is good, but choosing wisely is even better.
(and thanks to MediaPost and Joe Mandese for alerting us to Patrick Quinns insights)
The Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Photo credit http://www.sxc.hu/photo/951616
We also strive to read as much as we can about our business, and so when we noticed a story this week in Business Insider titled The Traditional Media Buying Agency Is Dead, it caught our eye.
The author, Larry Allen is SVP, Business Development for 24/7 Real Media, a leading online media-buying agency. His primary point is summarized in the following quote:
The media agency is lost in an ever widening chasm between highly-creative, focused execution and fully-automated audience buying, leaving them without direction and purpose. The expected massive shift of TV dollars to digital this year will put even more pressure on the traditional media agency to find its place in the value chain. …..
I would argue that the media agency adds undue overhead and doesn’t service the client’s best interests. My prediction is that the creative agency will regain control of media strategy, forming a new breed of full-service agencies that complement the new audience buying firms.
He raises some very interesting points, and if he is correct, the revival of the traditional full service agency would be a rare example of an industry going full-circle back to its roots.
Recognizing our bias, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we don’t agree for quite a few reasons. The first is that the shift of advertising dollars from mass media to interactive is predicted to slow quite dramatically. This graph from eMarketer illustrates the point:
Source: eMarketer
Not that any industry would complain about an 8% annual growth rate, but you would expect the double digit trends to continue if Mr. Allen was correct.
Next, the problem of misdirected marketing spend hasn’t really gotten any better since John Wannamaker made his much quoted remarks. Comscore just released a study of online advertising that found that 31 percent of online ad impressions were served but never viewed by consumers, and 72 percent of online campaigns had at least some of their ads running next to content not considered “brand safe” by the advertisers.
So will bringing the media buying function back to the full-service agencies result in better execution? Will automation of the media buying process result in fewer wasted impressions and inappropriate placements? With all due respect to our creative partners (with whom we work closely, by the way!), we don’t think so.
We believe you need a dedicated partner to help guide you through the maze of increasingly confusing advertising options, to help showcase that brilliant creative. But more importantly, what do you think?
How to be an Advertising Genius Without Really Trying
Source: Publicdomainpictures.net
Why would you advertise anywhere but on the Internet?
It’s cheap.
You can target buyers.
It’s trackable.
And you don’t need to deal with all of the complications of producing a commercial or dealing with a media buyer? Just go to Google AdWords, and voila, everyone can be an advertising genius. Right?
If only life was that simple…
We are the first to agree that there are many compelling reasons why online advertising has become the second largest advertising medium after TV.
Among them:
• The opportunity to place brand messages in extremely relevant content
• The ability to provide opportunity for immediate brand engagement and interaction
• Cost efficiency
• Delivering selling messages to customers and prospects at all phases of the purchase funnel
• Real-time analytics
And online advertising allows marketers to reach customers and prospects at times of the day when people don’t consume other media (9a-5p), influencing sales either while people are at work, on their way home and at night.
It can seamlessly integrate with other media to strengthen marketing campaigns.
It allows a marketer to drive traffic to a website or landing page designed specifically to act as a transfer step from online to whatever the marketer wants the prospect to do next.
It provides phenomenal creative opportunities for both rich media and video all at costs that are advantaged vs. other media.
And, today, it can finally be managed cost efficiently by your agency by using demand side platforms and real time buying, leading to both campaign implementation and CPM efficiencies.
But, you shouldn’t build a media plan using just one medium. It needs to be an integrated as part of your overall marketing and media strategy. And if you doubt it, then ask yourself, “Why did Google spend over $38 million on television advertising (in the first nine months of 2011) to promote itself?”
Makes you want to say hmmm, doesn’t it?
What’s black & white and read all over?
Photo credit: http://www.vierdrie.nl
Okay, so the old joke doesn’t really translate in writing.
It’s not news that newspaper circulation and reach have been declining over the years. And forecasts for the coming year aren’t all that sunny.
Circulation declines did not start with the advent of the Internet as most people assume. According to Tony Rogers,
I know you’ve seen the reports.
However, while circulation is surely down, newspapers are still a great medium to reach an upscale audience. Data from Scarborough shows that for Sunday and average issue readers, more educated and higher income readers index high, with the the most educated and highest income groups indexing the highest – 136 for households with income $250+ and 129 for education level of some post graduate work+.
Newspapers continue to be creative with advertising options; many offline opportunities are sold in concert with online newspaper products to increase reach/penetration and to reinforce messaging via different outlets. And since online newspaper reaches a broader demographic group, this bundling can enhance your buy. Newspapers as an advertising medium’s future may be a bit brighter with the advent of tablets/ereaders via apps which are attracting more younger/upscale readers.
And while it’s true that print newspaper advertising has a relatively high CPM as compared to other local media, crossing platforms and including online components can generally lower your CPM considerably. Both can be planned and purchased with some precision. In most markets, advertising can be can be purchased on a geo basis (zip code level and sometimes smaller) with print inserts and online ads.
Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/a_kartha
The impact of page dominant ads can really contribute to brand awareness and brand equity. But it’s not all about branding, as newspaper is also great medium for advertising as data indicates that up to 60-65% of all people who purchase/subscribe to the paper do so for the ads.That’s a pretty receptive audience. And the recent How America Shops & Spends report illustrates how readers are greatly influenced by newspaper advertising with over 50-65% surveyed attributing planned shopping to newspaper ads across a wide variety of categories.
So don’t discount newspapers as an advertising option. Depending on your goals, it might make sense in your media mix.
The Year in Review
Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/krilm
I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what has happened this year and to consider what 2012 will bring. We produce an annual white paper with our view of the coming year (it’s a great read – check it out!). This post is not meant to replace the paper, but rather to add a few thoughts.
U.S. advertising spending in 2011 will end slightly up from last year up 2.9% to $147.3 billion. As quoted in the WSJ, outlays for online advertising rose 12% in 2011 to $25.9 billion, and television 4% to $58.8 billion. Predictions for 2012 have been changing but the latest prediction from IPGs Magna has U.S. spending up 3.7%, to $153 billion. Source: Media Buyer Planner.
If you haven’t noticed, there’s an election year coming. Ad inventories across all platforms will be depleted by the expected record political spending in 2012, with the largest shortage in local outlets. In 2008, roughly 85% of measured media advertising placed for the November general election was in local TV, where political ads take precedence over those from regular marketers, and 2012 is expected to be worse. Hopefully, you’ve incorporated this in your planning, as it will surely affect costs and avails.
Measurements to quantify the effectiveness of marketing spending have been the Holy Grail since John Wannamaker spoke his much quoted phrase “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half”. How many stories have you read this year discussing measurement? (Hundreds? Thousands?) We think this recent study (12/5/11) from IfByPhone.com sums up the problem – while 82% of marketers say their executive management expects every campaign to be measured, less than a third can effectively evaluate the ROI of each channel. Will 2012 be the year when advertising ROI is truly understood?
These are just a few of the things I think about on a daily basis. What’s on the top of your mind?
2011 draws to a close…
We hope the holidays bring you peace, joy, and good food.
We’ll be here – watching the media trends and getting ready to report back to you.
Magazines are Still Kicking.
Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/govicinity
Oh contraire!
In fact, MediaFinder reports that 239 new publications launched this year.
As reported by Rochester Institute of Technology, the Gfk MRI Survey of the American Consumer states that the March through October 2011 total gross magazine audience was 1.6 billion. Most interesting is to learn that of those impressions, only 11% are digital-only. That’s a lot of people reading print magazines. 81% or 1.278 billion impressions. The audience for readers of both digital & print platforms is quite small at 8.5%.
And you might be surprised to learn that the Affinity’s American Magazine Study reports that over 184 million adults (U.S.) read magazines in print or online monthly and that the average number of different magazines read by each? 8.1. Eight point one. We’re talking a lot of magazines here. This study’s results differ from the Survey of the American Consumer as it shows that almost half of Americans are reading both print and online content.
Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/pale
All studies indicate that the demographic profile of online readers tend to be younger, male, and higher income than print readers.
A final research note: ACP Magazine and Neuro-Insight Research conducted neuroscientific research and demonstrated that magazines have the highest level of consumer engagement. You can read more at Marketing Magazine. I know you want to.
Magazines may or may not be a match for your marketing objectives. But you’d be wise to consider them as you work to create the most powerful marketing mix.
Video Killed The Radio Star….Or Did it?
Who listens to the radio anymore?
I bet you do.
Think about it – did you turn on your car radio this week; maybe on your way to work, or as you were running carpool? Did you stream talk or music with SiriusXM or Pandora?
If so, you’re not alone.
The Pew Research Center found that 93% of Americans report using or owning an AM/FM radio. And unlike other forms of traditional media, that figure has remained stable over time, slipping only 3 percentage points in the last decade.
Research from the Radio Advertising Bureau (and we recognize the bias) concurs that radio is ubiquitous.
For instance, RAB reports that 94% of Alpha Boomers (those aged 55-64) listen to radio every week, and they listen to an average of 16 hours per week. And perhaps more surprising, radio reaches 90% of 12-24-year-olds weekly.
It’s the original mass media; it’s been around for decades and yet it still has the ability to generate excitement.
It’s cost efficient, targeted, immediate, and extremely flexible. And it can be used to create real community bonds.
How? By tying your commercial message into station personalities and integrating your brand into programming. No other medium allows integration as seamlessly as radio.
Photo credit http://poliansky.com/
So now the big question – how does radio fit into a media plan?
Start by thinking of three major features of radio advertising: focus, efficiency, and immediacy.
For example, remember where you listened to the radio this week? In your car, right? You weren’t on the phone, you weren’t texting, you were focused on where you were going. Radio reaches people when they aren’t as distracted as they are when watching TV. Your customers are in their cars, in a fairly uncluttered environment, and they are focused on the medium.
Radio stations offer smart advertisers a range of different ways to add value to your buy including integration with station web sites and social networks, streaming with the iHeartRadio app, free production of commercials, use of DJ talent, bonus spots, promotions, call ins, events, live broadcasts at client locations, on-air contests and more.
And it’s almost always live.
Think about this – how many times have you heard the 9th caller say “I won? I won? I can’t believe I won. I never win anything”. And the prize doesn’t matter. Whether it’s a $1,000 shopping spree, a free oil change or even a station T-shirt, the excitement is till the same.
We have helped even small brands achieve significant awareness just by making a one or two station buy. And when these same marketers take advantage of all the stations can provide, their campaigns can be exponentially effective.
And if you use radio well, the next person you hear excitedly scream – “I won, I won” can be you.
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