Say Goodbye to the Golden Age of Television! It’s Time to Put Your Money Where Your Social Is
With over 14% of U.S. homes jumping on the bandwagon, it’s not news that cord cutting is “so hot right now.” As streaming services and commercial-free TV -- HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime -- are rising in popularity, the Golden Age of {traditional} television may be coming to a close… along with its advertising opportunities. Yet why are so brands still gung-ho on TV? Brands continue to push millions of dollars in TV’s direction, but are still so hesitant to spend even a fraction of that on social. Here are 6 reasons why this is a big mistake:
#1. Hit the Target Audience Bullseye
While TV provides the opportunity to reach audiences at scale, when it comes to Broadcast or Cable, majority of the audiences you’re reaching aren’t even relevant. While Spot TV hones in on specific markets, and addressable TV targets based on household composition, social media can always be targeted, and the targeting is done at the individual, not household level. Facebook has coined this as “people-based marketing.” Social targeting can get pretty creepy (or as advertisers say, strategic), down to reaching target audiences based on what they’re watching, interests, keywords, behaviors, and conversations. Social targeting can pretty much combine the best things from display, search, and TV, and create audiences around it. And yes, social can specifically target cordcutters or TV viewers. And while streaming services can get more granular than your average cable or broadcast service, it comes at a premium, so you better be willing to pay for it. Speaking of being willing to pay for it...
#2: Save the Big Bucks
…TV is A LOT more expensive than social media, which is a large part of why brands need so much money to even think about advertising on the medium. Average Primetime Broadcast and Cable CPMs are $31.97 and $17.49 respectively vs. $9.64 on Facebook, and $5.40 for social ads as a whole. That means if given equal budgets, you’d probably reach a lot more people on social, with a lot more cost efficiency.
And when it comes to production costs, social will almost always come out ahead. While you can use a cut-down from a TV ad, if you want to create for social only, you rarely need full-scale commercial quality. Instagram Story ads, which are seeing a lot of success right now, often are unproduced and shot in real-time. Social also has the benefit of being able to leverage UGC and influencer posts more readily, so production may not even be needed.
#3. Get Flexible
If you want to be agile with your marketing dollars, TV will not afford you this luxury. Media for TV campaigns has to be locked in up to 6 weeks in advance for TV, whereas social campaigns can launch as soon as they’re ready… meaning you can work up to the wire with social. This provides a lot more flexibility in terms of being able to be react in real time, affording the opportunity to tap into “trending” topics. On the flip side, if something goes terribly wrong with a campaign, it’s far easier to just switch a social campaign off than to pull down a TV buy. While social buys can be managed in-house, TV buyers have to work with representatives at each of the networks or OTT partners, so there are quite a few more cooks in the kitchen.
Creative plays a role here as well - while a last minute social post can be fairly easily thrown together (memes, anyone?), TV ad turnaround is nowhere near as quick. And the options for what you can produce for social are endless compared to TV. Social not only has varied video length, but unit types as well, from Twitter polls to Instagram stories to Facebook Instant Experience - there is A LOT of variety there.
#4. Talk With Your Audience, Not At Them
Brands like Wendy’s are also capitalizing on social’s ability to be more conversational (or in Wendy’s case snarky), and actually engage with audiences. Social can provide an end-to-end experience from path to purchase all the way to customer experience, retention, and engagement. TV? Not so much. TV is a one-way broadcast. Whereas social can drive users to -- and optimize towards -- many different types of actions such as post engagements, post shares, website clicks, and video views, TV just has the one option.
#5. Track Success with Transparency
It’s surprising how many challenges there still are for TV attribution considering the amount of money that goes into it. While calculating the ROI of engagements and video views isn’t so straightforward either, click-throughs, ecommerce purchases, and even offline conversions can be tracked on social. While social can connect the dots from ad exposure to sale, TV attribution is a bit trickier. TV often relies on a disjointed pathway, relying on someone typing in a URL they see at the end of an ad, data from 2nd device usage, or 3rd parties (meaning more money spent) to remove the guesswork. Additionally, TV companies can’t provide real-time reporting level of detail that you can get from social campaigns. While it gets a little easier with connected TVs, measurement is still typically at the household level and requires a 3rd party CRM system to match data to.
#6: Reach More People in More Places with More Results
Admittedly, TV does still have more reach than social… but not by a ton. In Q1 2018, US weekly TV reach was 342MM vs. 334MM on social. However, if you’re looking at 18-34 year-olds, YouTube has TV networks beat. So while we don’t see TV going away completely any time soon, as it’s time in the spotlight may be coming to an end, it’s time to diversify. The best way to have your ad resonate is by running ads on both social AND TV. Facebook ran a study in 2017 with a brand called Shark, in which ad recall, purchase intent, and awareness all saw a significantly higher lift when running TV and social together vs. running TV or social alone. Even Super Bowl ads (some of the biggest TV ad spending of the year) are now often leaked on social first, because it helps build the buzz! So if you’re blowing out your buy with TV only, you’re limiting overall lift. TV and Social should aim to have similar reach in order to reach people in both places, therefore making your media dollars the most effective. This means putting more of an investment in social.
It’s time to face the music, the modern era of mobile, and put your money where your social is.