From TV to digital: not reach, but impact should be determining factor

Blog Jori van de Spijker – Practice Lead Brand & Comms

In recent years, there has been much debate as to whether the era of TV is coming to an end. TV is a medium of the past, the future is digital, or is it? Marketing experts like Mark Ritson believe things will not move as fast. TV is still the most important medium type in the landscape, that doesn’t just change overnight. However, earlier this year, Ebiquity published a new report with the main outcome being that linear TV viewing is progressing faster than expected. So, will TV not be as relevant within a few years? In the increasingly fragmented media landscape, marketers are left searching, so it is crucial to closely monitor this development.

From the paper, to radio and tv

Today, there are countless of medium types that people use. Once, it was quite simple, businesses were limited to the newspaper advertisement. Thereafter, radio became the leading channel, and from the 60’s onwards, there was TV. In those days, TV had a massive reach. Since then, campaigns were mainly developed around TV deployment, and supplemented with other media.

However, in the past 15 years we have seen the media landscape become more fragmented than ever before. And due to digitisation, for the first time, platforms were added that could compete with TV in terms of reach. Facebook and Google can reach almost all consumers, with the UK estimating a whopping 40 million Facebook users and 24 million Instagram accounts. Advertisers are increasingly asking whether TV deployment is still necessary, and whether campaigns cannot just be fully deployed online.

reach vs. effect

But is reach everything? Something I miss in this discussion is looking at effect. The conversation is mostly led by numbers, how many people can we reach and how often can we reach them. And it is understandable that we look at these factors, because reach and contacts are easy to measure, and the numbers are often central to campaign evaluations of media agencies.

But a more important question I think is how the most impact can be achieved with the campaign. And for that, not just reach, but also effect is needed. Influencing the target group, instead of just reaching as many contacts as possible. We may be able to make targeted purchases and achieve millions of impressions on online platforms, but we also know that it is a much more volatile environment where advertisements are usually only viewed for 1.8 seconds. So, comparing contacts across media channels is like comparing apples and oranges.

Coincidentally, I have recently been asked this question by several clients. Under pressure from all kinds of stakeholders in the organisation, they must justify using TV for their campaigns. Isn’t it more efficient and future-proof to run the campaign completely online? That is why we have once again looked at the cross-media effect studies we conducted for these clients. And there we unanimously see that campaigns that are fully deployed online are less powerful than campaigns with a combination of TV and online. Even when we take into account the budget and size of the campaign.

realising effect

So, it is not just about reach, but also about effect. But how do you ensure that you realise effect? Effect depends on 2 things. First, the characteristics of the medium type. How big is the screen, how volatile is the content consumed? Has the entire ad been viewed, was the sound on or off? For example, a non-skippable pre-roll on YouTube can be seen on the screen for much longer than an advertisement on social media that people can scroll through. The same applies for a pre-roll that can be skipped, while you can only skip a commercial block on TV if you are willing to change channels.

Second, the creative strength of an advertisement plays a major role in realising effect. Even though much has happened in recent years, I notice that many advertisers still find this very difficult. How do you make strong, online creatives? What is the effect of YouTube compared to Facebook? And how does it compare to TV commercials? It is important to properly map out the creative strength of these creatives through A/B testing and pre-testing and learn from it.

the new era

In today’s world it is a challenge for brands to not only focus on how to reach people, but especially on how to realise effect and optimal impact. It is these kinds of questions that should be put on the research agenda soon. The media landscape continues to change, the rise of TikTok for instance, which many consumers now use. And I continue to follow this development with great interest. But I also hope to see that we will not solely focus on reach, but that the impact of the media mix will be the determining factor.