Television: The marketeer’s darling for brand building and business growth

• Recent estimates of time spent on media consumption pegs the share of television at 59% with digital following a close second at 30%.
• Google, which leads digital AdEx revenues, and spent approximately a massive Rs 557 crore on television in 2019, promoting its various services.
• Meera Iyer, Chief Marketing Officer, Medlife.com lists down the reasons why TV gets the lion’s share of marketing budgets.

If one was to consider recent statistics, an average adult customer spends nearly 5 hours daily consuming media. Recent estimates peg the share of television at 59% with digital following a close second at 30%. The remaining is made up of other traditional media like print and radio. When you compare the time spent to Adex estimates, TV gets 38%, digital 19%, while print takes the second position at 32% of all marketing spends in the country. In a sense, the ratio of spends to time spent as percentages for both TV and digital are about 64%. Despite this, as a marketeer, given a choice for 2020 and the foreseeable near future, I would choose to invest in television. The foremost reason for this is the simple rule of marketing which indicates that, provided there is budget available, it is good to invest in the medium where customers spend the maximum time. Why? Here are my top 5 reasons.

Highest Consumption

Television has the highest share of screen time, nearly double digital! Going back to economics, it is best to advertise here if you have the spending power. What’s more is that the reach is also better. About 195 million households (~80% of the total) own a television in India, of which 80% are CNS. No other medium is as widely penetrated and coupled with screen time, it’s a clear winner.

Better Recall

Television is less cluttered than any other medium. There are about 12K brands advertising on television when compared to the 2 lakh on print and more than a million on digital. This means marketeers stand a better chance at creating memorability and recall on this medium as compared to any other. One can argue that it’s the creative that determines the recall, but for the same spread of good, average and bad creatives across all media, the recall will be higher on television. This is not just due to the lesser clutter but also the higher view time.

Trusted Medium

People trust messaging from TV more. According to a Nielsen study , TV trust stands at 68%, ranked below word of mouth (85%), print (71%), and online customer reviews (70 %). Digital ads fared at about 48% to 53%. This goes to show that TV will have a better shot at influencing your brand’s purchase decision and trust. Print can also build trust, but it has far lesser reach and time spent, apart from being quite expensive.

Cost Effective Medium

When you compare the cost to reach a 1000 people, while minimum outlay on television for an effective campaign is large, the cost per reach is cheaper than other mediums for comparable duration of ad viewership. Although one does not know if the ad playing on TV has been fully watched, it is estimated that only 9% of digital ads are seen for more than a second. The average time spent on a full-page print ad is about 2.8 seconds. Television is thus a more cost effective medium.

Helps Brand Metrics

Last but not the least, television is a medium that works! In my 15 years of experience, I have seen most of the brand and business metrics move with TV spends more linearly as compared to other media. For me personally, the jury is still out on whether the same can be said for any other medium despite having experimented quite a bit now in the two startups I have been a part of.

In conclusion

Television is and will remain relevant to marketeers for quite some time to come; the numbers are stacked in its favor after all. Even completely digital businesses like Amazon and Flipkart still use television to drive adoption. While it may seem tongue in cheek, Google, which leads digital AdEx revenues, spent a massive Rs 557 crore on television in 2019 promoting its various services – because it’s proven!

- By Meera Iyer, Chief Marketing Officer, Medlife.com