TYPE A GROUP - NEWSLETTER #41
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BEWILDERING CONFUSION AMONG ADVERTISERS
You expect an accountant to be knowledgeable about taxes. You expect a lawyer to be up to date on the law. You expect an auto mechanic to know a lot about cars.
Can you expect the same of advertisers?
Advertisers spend about half a trillion dollars a year on advertising. You'd think they'd take the time to know their business. There is convincing evidence that they are bewilderingly out of touch.
The most recent evidence comes from Thinkbox in the UK. Thinkbox is the UK's commercial TV trade body, and is the most competent and innovative of such organizations that I have come across.
They recently commissioned a survey comparing advertisers' assumptions about consumer media behavior with the facts of consumer behavior. The people at Thinkbox are too nice and well-mannered to say this, but I'm not -- the results leave very little doubt. Advertisers don't know shit.
Let's have a look at some charts I made that summarize the findings.
People spend 87% of their viewing time watching live TV. This is 75% higher than what advertisers thought.
This chart shows that advertisers' assumptions about video-on-demand viewing are off by about 900%.
Our third chart shows that industry estimates of time spent watching subscription VOD (Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc) are off by over 600%.
Time spent on YouTube is over-estimated by almost 300% by advertising "professionals."
Advertisers' estimate of time spent "multi-screening" is off by over 150%
The obvious question is this -- how can people who work in an industry that is constructed on media behavior be so bafflingly misinformed? I think there are three reasons:
First is the avalanche of misleading stories in the press and the torrent of ill-informed presentations that we are subjected to -- coupled with no effort on the part of too many to correct the record.
Second is the pervasive fear of being labeled "out-of-it" by questioning the ignorant yapping of marketing "thought leaders."
And finally is the fact that advertising people live in a different world. Or as one guy once said, "Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey." If you need further evidence, have a look at this...
...this chart compares UK advertisers' social media and online video behaviors to that of normal people. It's pretty obvious that advertisers are living in a world of their own.
A while back I was speaking to the employees of a TV network. I asked them how much video viewing they thought was done on a TV versus a web device. The consensus was about 50-50. The actual numbers were 95% TV and 5% online. And these people work in television. You can't make this up.
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For info on having Bob speak at an event, contact bob@typeagroup.com