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Having
worked in
print, radio, TV and now the
Internet, I've
had an ongoing fascination with the race
for supremacy among the competing
media platforms - a race that has seen
the Internet quickly closing on and, in
most cases, passing the
competition.
There
are actually multiple races going
on including advertising revenue share,
time spent with each medium, etc.
An especially important race to win is
the one for most influence on
purchasing decisions. That is where
most advertisers are going to want
to |
Image
from Bigstock |
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spend
their money because, as Rick Schwartz
is fond of saying (it is even printed in
the masthead on his blog),
"Nothing happens until a
sale is made." |
Since
the value of our Internet domain names is
largely tied to how useful they are in helping business
end users influence their customers to make
a purchase, it is critical for the Internet to keep
gaining ground on that front. The latest study,
released this week, shows we are continuing to
make inroads, especially with younger
generations, but we are not there yet.
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The
Center for Media Research broke
down the
numbers from The Media
Comparisons Study that the TVB
(Television Bureau of Advertising) commissioned
research firm Knowledge
Networks to do. Of course,
with the TV ad association involved the
thought of a "stacked deck" |
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Image
from Bigstock |
immediately
crossed my mind - especially when I saw
that TV did indeed come out on top and
by a big margin.
However,
Knowledge Networks is a reputable
research firm and, even if you are still
not buying it, you can completely ignore
the TV entries in the study and
still get some interesting insight into
where the Internet currently stands in
the influence race and what the unmistakable
trend for the future is. |
For
starters, the study showed that among all adults
18 and older, the most time - 5.2
hours a day - is spent with TV. The Internet
is the solid runner-up at 3 hours a day,
more than double the 1.4 hours spent
daily with #3 Radio. Bringing up the rear
are Mobile Phones (0.7), Newspapers
(0.4), Tablets (0.3) and Magazines
(0.2).
However
those rankings get shuffled in the more important
race - which has the most influence on purchasing
decisions? The winner was actually none
of the above as the largest percentage
of respondents, 39.5%, said they
didn't know. However, among those who
said they did know, TV won again (and by
an even bigger margin) with 37.2% saying
TV influenced their purchasing decisions most.
Interestingly, the study also shows that TV
commercials played a key role in driving more
people to the Internet to learn more about
the product.
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The
biggest surprise to me is that while the
general perception of newspapers
is that they are going the way of the
dinosaur, newspapers still ranked 2nd
in purchasing influence, cited by
10.6% of the respondents. The
Internet came in 3rd with 5.6%
(followed by Magazines at 4.4%, Radio at
1.8% and all of the others with less
than 1% each).
However,
here is where the future trend is
clear. The influence of newspapers drops
sharply with each step down the
generational ladder. While 12.3%
of those aged 35-64 named
newspapers as being most influential in
their purchase decisions, only 3.2%
of those 18-34 said the same (a
number
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Image
from Bigstock |
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that
is really bad news for papers). 7.4%
of the 18-34 year-olds said online
ads influence them the most. Among
the older 35-64 group online ads
influenced only 2.9% of them
most. |
So,
as the new generation takes over the Internet
continues its inexorable rise. It won't be long
before they pass newspapers in influence on
purchase decisions (as the web has already done
in terms of time spent with the medium).
However, if the study is indeed impartial, we
still have a long way to go to overtake TV.
Still it is nice to see the study show that TV
has been an ally in one important
respect by putting URLs in advertising
that drive more people to the web.
There
is lot more interesting information in the study
that is nicely summarized in this report.
You can also get the entire study in Powerpoint
format from the TVB
website.
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