Not surprisingly, the TV Bureau likes TV best!

Maybe it's unfair of me to be suspicious. 

Maybe my 15+ year advocacy of the online/digital channel(s) has robbed me of my perspective, and I simply can't appreciate facts for facts. 

Maybe. 

See, this came across my inbox today via Marketing Mag's Marketing Daily (sub required):

A new survey from the Television Bureau of Canada concludes that TV advertising remains the most effective way to reach consumers.

Hmm ... so the TV people say TV is the best!  Do tell!

The Media Attitudes 2005 study, conducted by ComQuest Research, a division of BBM (Bureau of Broadcast Measurement), reports that on every variable, consumers report that television advertising has a greater impact on them than advertising they see or hear in any other major medium.

For variables such as effectiveness, influence, power, persuasiveness and engagement, TV advertising leads the pack, ahead of newspapers, radio, magazines and the Internet. In most cases, according to the phone survey of 1,000 respondents, carried out in three waves last summer, newspaper and Internet advertising rank second and third behind TV ads.

Key results of the survey of adults 18+ include:

•80% said television advertising is the most influential, with newspaper ads trailing at 8%;

•75% said television advertising is the most powerful, with newspapers advertising 65 percentage points behind at 10%;

•71% said television advertising is the most persuasive, easily eclipsing newspaper ads at 12%;

•69% said TV ads are the most engaging, far ahead of the 9% rating of newspapers;

•68% said television advertising is the most effective medium, surpassing newspaper advertising at 15%;

•59% said television advertising is the most relevant, more than twice newspaper’s 25%; and

•53% said television advertising is the most authoritative, some 31 points ahead of newspaper ads at 22%.

I'd actually never heard of the Television Bureau of Canada.  So I went to their site (http://www.tvb.ca/).  Reading the copy was like sitting in McMann and Tate's offices on Bewitched.

Welcome to TVB! If this is your first visit to the Television Bureau of Canada's Web site, you're in store for some excellent information about the powers of commercial television advertising and the broadcast industry in Canada.

OK, so .. cheesy writing.  A lot of "bureaus" have cheesy writing.  But then I found their TVBasics [pdf],  "the ultimate compendium and reference guide on television, including viewing trends, statistics, station information and industry composition data, Canadian advertising revenues, market and regional facts about television along with many inter-national comparisons."  And in its section on "2005-2006 Key Strengths of Television Advertising in Canada" I found these gems:

• Television has an aura of importance. It is a prestigious medium, enhancing advertisers' image by its use
• Television appeals to more of the consumers' senses than any other medium
• Television gets closer to one-to-one communication than any other mass medium

And (AND), in this 2005-2006 update,  they have the nerve to tout data from 2000 as current!

The thing is, I like TV.  Really.  But we got a PVR for the holidays and we will never go back.  I know I'm an "early adopter" but Canadians overall are early adopters. And it won't be long before those silver boxes are everywhere.  And with them we're only spending 129 minutes to watch 129 minutes of content, instead of spending 180 minutes to watch 129 minutes of content. (Jaffe has a great chapter on the impact of "On-Demand Viewing" on the TV watching habits of Americans in 2005 in Life After the 30-Second Spot).

In the interest of fair and balanced coverage of Canadian's media choices, I went to trusty Ipsos-Reid.  In a release entitled "The Internet Continues To Impact Consumers' Usage Of Other Media" (sub required) from August 2005, I found some interesting data ...

The recent Ipsos Reid study Online News and Information Seeking: What the Future Holds¹ shows that the amount of time Internet-using Canadians are spending actively using the Internet is on the rise, averaging 12.7 hours per week (up 46% from 8.7 hours in 2002²). This increase appears to have come at the expense of radio as the typical Internet-using adult spends 11 hours per week listening to the radio, down from 16 hours per week in 2002. While weekly Internet usage has surpassed radio listening, television retains the number one position among media sources with Internet-using Canadians averaging 14.3 hours³ of TV viewing per week. Still, the gap between Internet and TV usage is closing (a difference of 1.6 hours per week compared to 4.5 hours in 2002), with the Internet threatening to overtake television should these trends continue.

Cool.  So TV, still very important.  What about younger generations.  Our *future*.  Oh, and me.

Younger Internet-using Canadians (18-34) are particularly enthusiastic users of the Internet, spending more time actively using the Internet (14.7 hours per week) than they do with any other medium, including radio (11.7 hours per week), television (11.6 hours per week) and reading newspapers (2.5 hours per week). [emphasis mine because I simply couldn't resist].

Hmmm ...

OK, but what about *news* specifically?  What medium is the King of News?

While Internet use is on the rise, Internet-using Canadians turn to different sources depending on their news and information needs. For example, the Internet is used more to look for specific or ‘niche-like’ news and information such as health (48%) and travel information/guides (45%) whereas television tends to be used more for general news and information such as weather (70%) and national and international news (70%).

Ahh ... interesting. So where there is a particular need (say, a personalized, one-to-one kind of need) the Internet is used.  But where it is more general, TV is preferred.  So, what's a broadcast medium to do?

“Traditional sources for news and information are facing stiff competition from the Internet as seen by the high growth of Internet use compared to other traditional media,” says Catherine Rogers, a Senior Research Manager with Ipsos Reid’s Media Practice. “In order to combat this growing threat, traditional media sources must continue to find innovative ways to use the Internet as a complement to their total offering.”

So ... it's not this TV RULES THE WORLD situation as described by the TBC.  It's more of an integrated offering that is required.  More of a choosing the right channel for the right audience at the right time with the right offer and supplementing that offer in other channels.

Ladies and gentlemen ... welcome to 2006.  It is not your father's marketing mix.  That pretty blue chart above?  If those were the only 5 marketing channel choices, we'd be lucky.  The list is more like:

• TV
• Radio (online and off)
• Newspapers (online and off)
• Magazines (online and off)
• Video Games
• Cell phones
• Web sites
• Banner Ads
• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Product Placement
• Discussion Forums
• Search
• Experiential Marketing
• Guerilla Marketing Events
• Billboards
• Ad nauseum

Agencies, advertisers and bureaus need to recognize that our customers have surpassed us in sophistication and media-channel savvy.  And if we're going to ever have a meaningful conversation with them, we need to throw away our planning grids and start paying attention to them.  And that attention can't come with an aura of importance about how prestigious we are.  It's time to get over it and get real.

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