Media & Marketing:The demise of television advertising has been widely predicted as channel proliferation makes it ever more difficult to reach a mass audience. However new research suggests that reports of the death of TV commercials have been greatly exaggerated.
The Institute of Practitioners of Advertising (IPA) in Britain recently analysed 880 advertising campaigns entered into IPA award schemes since the 1980s.
Using this database of information, consultants Les Binet and Peter Field tried to identify the marketing practices and metrics that increase effectiveness for advertisers.
Their report, Marketing in the Era of Accountability, states: "Looking back over the last 25 years, it is clear that TV has historically been a highly effective medium.
"Campaigns that have used TV have significantly outperformed those that have not. This is not merely a budget effect; TV has outperformed other channels, even for small-budget campaigns."
In the UK, as the number of commercial channels has increased, the BBC's share of the total audience has fallen. So viewing of commercial TV has increased. As a result, it's actually getting easier to reach people with TV ads, not harder.
In addition, competition in the TV market has resulted in a given television budget going about 30 per cent further than it did in the 1980s. Factor in the fact that fragmentation allows advertisers to use the medium in a more targeted way and the IPA concludes that TV advertising in Britain is about 40 per cent more effective than it was in the 1980s.
Does the same apply in the Republic? Not to the same extent because, unlike the BBC, RTÉ has been commercial from the off. However fragmentation of the TV market in the Republic certainly facilitates better targeting by media buyers.
There are other reasons besides cost why advertisers have been slow to desert the tube. Binet and Field refer to academic Robert Heath's book published in 2001, The Hidden Power of Advertising. Heath argued that advertising is often more effective when it is processed in a low-involvement way, because this tends to lead consumers to judge messages on an emotional rather than a rational basis.
Because of the way people use TV to relax, it is uniquely suited to low-involvement processing, and this may be a reason why it is so effective for advertisers.
The IPA report notes that more recent research produced by Heath demonstrated that attention levels to print adverts are two to three times greater than TV. This makes newspapers and magazines a better medium for ads where information has to be imparted.
Though the TV medium remains the number one choice for advertisers of consumer goods, almost all ad campaigns are multi-channel, ie the TV spend is complemented by spend on press, radio, outdoor, direct mail, public relations or internet. But can advertisers spread themselves too thinly?
The IPA research says the average number of media used per campaign has increased from two to five in the last 25 years. According to Binet and Field, multi-channel campaigns score 65 per cent for effectiveness compared to 58 per cent for single-channel campaigns.
However single-channel campaigns are more accountable because their effect can be more easily evaluated. Says the IPA report: "There is a tension between accountability and effectiveness. Ironically, the trend towards integration may actually be making marketing less accountable."
Most of the campaigns analysed by Binet and Field were centred on TV commercials. They say there are too few cases where radio or cinema were the lead media to draw many conclusions about their effectiveness.
However the IPA analysis states that "outdoor seems to be generally less effective than TV, at least when it takes the lead".
According to Binet and Field: "Even with smaller budget campaigns, outdoor as a lead medium produces very few large business effects. Given our findings on the importance of emotion, this is exactly what you would expect for this generally less emotive medium."
The authors say the results do not mean advertisers should not use outdoor media. They explain: "IPA data shows that adding outdoor media to the mix increases effectiveness. But unless they can be used in a powerfully emotive way (eg Wonderbra), they are generally more suitable as secondary media rather than primary ones."
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What do Beckett, Behan, Joyce, O'Casey, Shaw, Wilde and Yeats have in common? Apparently they all left Ireland by ferry out of Dublin. So Dublin Port is using these iconic literary giants as the platform for a €1 million advertising campaign to celebrate the heritage of ferry travel from Dublin. At the launch, port chief Enda Connellan recalled the haphazard nature of James Joyce's plans to finance his leaving. He borrowed relentlessly for the trip telling a friend: "I am not like Jesus Christ, I cannot walk on the water." Demanding a pound from others, he reasoned curiously: "That is not exorbitant, I think, as it is my last." Connellan observed: "I must use that one myself next time I travel."
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One impact of the very wet weather is that people are spending more time on the couch. For the first three weeks of July, the measured rainfall at Dublin Airport was 114mm, compared with a 18mm for the whole of July 2006. Consequently, according to Dublin ad agency Mediaworks, the average time spent watching the box through July has been three hours per day, which is 11 per cent ahead on last year.
