Hot news: we’re still in love with TV. And newspapers.
64% of viewers polled positive toward TV ads saying it was the ‘advertising format with the most impact’. Further, nearly three quarters of 18-24 year olds ranked TV as tops when it comes to ads. This from a current ‘Edinburgh International Telelvision Festival’ TV viewers survey and report.
If that’s not enough, 30% of those polled said newspapers had the (second) greatest impact. Then magazines, radio and outdoor.
What’s going on? TV advertising revenues have never been so hard hit, we’re told. Channel Four is only just about staving off bankruptcy, we thought, as a result of a ad revenues migrating to online. Ditto newspapers which are said to be closing down and switching off the lights across the land and indeed across the globe.
Yet here we are…learning that TV ads and newspapers really do make a positive and memorable impact. Internet search and display advertising was rated a ‘high-impact’ medium by just 12% and 8% of respondents, respectively.
What to think? That TV ads are memorable is not even the beginning of an argument. Of course they are. Tell me the ‘Have a break, have a Kit-Kat’ ads weren’t memorable. Or the little tin aliens helpless with laughter and falling over at the way Brits make mashed potatoes isn’t memorable. Or that the jingle ‘For mash get Smash’ is remotely forgettable. I can even remember the brand: it was Cadbury’s. And currently, what could be better than ‘Compare the Meerkats’? Just pure, wickedly funny, cut-through. Never bought any Smash though, come to think of it. Nor have I actually gone to ‘Compare…’.
Ahhh…but it’s good to remember them days. And I’m sure there’ll be just as many memorable ads from these days. But can we trust the survey findings? I mean…how did they decide on the ‘TV viewers’? Were they hardcore, coke-swilling, pizza-guzzling Corrie and 24 Hours and Big Bro addicts glued to their collective sofas? Such biased selectivity could never have occurred, I know.
In which case, we can only assume that it’s the rise in unemployment that’s to blame. Those ‘Neets’ who don’t know nothing and are currently the most disproportionately affected out-of-work cohort. Sadly, I conclude, they must be responsible for all this new-found telly-love.
A bit worrying though when all you ever hear about these days is how no-one watches telly any more and everyone’s on the web all the time. And the fact that newspaper ads still create a stir…wow! Where does that come from?
Views in an email, please. And it would be nice if somebody were to confirm that great and memorable though TV brand advertising and press advertising may be, it’s doing a different job to what we do: we call our job ’selling customers stuff and then getting them to come back so we can sell them some more’.
