Lead Forensics

5 Media Myths it’s Time to Shelve

07 January 2019

Work in marketing? Then you’ll be all too familiar with the often bewildering task of separating fact from myth when it comes to making the right decisions for your brand…

To make things easier for you, we’ve wrung every last drop of our collective experience into identifying five media myths that need to be exposed and shelved.

Direct Response and Branded TV are mutually exclusive

We still hear this media myth a lot. if you want to build your brand, advertise during peak hours on larger TV channels. Is your brand all about direct response? Conventional wisdom suggests daytime is your friend. Let’s nip this one in the bud and turn to facts: all brand building campaigns drive response, and all DRTV strategies impact your brand. Invest in a quality creative, tell an engaging story that appeals to consumer wants, and both sides of the coin will shine.

The ‘digital’ and ‘traditional’ divide

This media myth is a convenient one depending on your agenda. Read between the lines and what you’re left with are attempts to frame the media landscape as ‘the modern versus the outdated’, ‘the future versus the obsolete’. In actual fact, digitisation has fully extended its tendrils into TV, out-of-home, press and radio. Tradition sure looks fresh these days…

Advertisers can now optimise television airtime on the back of real-time performance data, execute interactive outdoor campaigns programmatically, run press activity that stretches across print and online as part of one seamless strategy, and tap into the increasing popularity of digital radio stations.

Advertising is too expensive

Concerned by costs, many businesses choose to rely on owned and earned social media activity, reviews, referrals and email marketing. All of these can be effective in building trust and maximising engagement, but by not harnessing the power of TV, out-of-home and radio, companies are depriving themselves of the chance to reach out and realise their full growth potential.

The reality is that the rise of social media and programmatic have driven down the costs of other medias, with one view of one TV spot alone now costing just half a penny on average. Brand awareness and customer acquisition do not come for free; but upon the backdrop of unprecedented market competition, investing in both could prove priceless.

Young people just watch Netflix

OK, so Netflix and Amazon Instant Video are pretty popular these days. You would think that us youngsters (30 still counts) are spending every moment of screen time tuning into the latest exclusive production or film release.

Nope – another media myth.

In fact, research conducted by Thinkbox attests that Subscription Video-on-Demand (SVOD) accounts for just 12.1% of a 16-34 year-old’s daily video consumption. Live TV still leads on 33.1%, with YouTube tallying 22.1% and Broadcaster Video-on-Demand (BVOD) 9.6%.

Nobody views adverts anymore

If this was the case then Guerillascope and scores of other agencies wouldn’t exist. Ultimately, the issue of ad avoidance brings us back to the importance of investing enough money in a quality creative and strategy: provided you’re willing to spend on your brand, there’s an audience waiting to engage with it.

This is backed up by stats, with the average UK adult still watching 43 TV ads a day and listening to 21 hours of radio every week. Whilst the viewability of online ads remains a source of concern, other medias continue to thrive.

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