THE MUST READ BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO MEDIA BUYING
In this article we will go through every type of media available and will explain why you should choose one over another in your next marketing campaign.
Advertising is big business. Last year alone marketers in United States spent over $191 billion dollars on marketing, advertising, promoting, etc. Hard to imagine that all this money was spent on the following five media types: TV, Print, Outdoor, Radio, and Digital.
TV
To this day TV leads the media landscape. 55% of US households have a TV. Network broadcasting is still geared towards people having these devices in the home. If you want to watch major sports events like the Super Bowl or the next Presidential Debates chances are you will be using your TV to do it. However, the landscape is slowly changing. As time passes TV networks are offering capabilities to watch your favorite shows on devices like smartphones and tablets.
Also, people are slowly shifting from the scheduled broadcast TV lifestyle to a more on demand watch it whenever I want lifestyle.
Over the last 10 years print took the biggest hit due to digital being the new kid on the block. Despite this setback its hard to ignore print. This is the only medium where marketers get more than they paid for.
Print offers residual value. Most print simply lays on coffee tables of random offices. A lot of the time the readers pick up the magazine 3 months after it was published. So the ad is still working even though you no longer paying for it.
Print offers a ton of targeting opportunities. In publications big or small you can target people by geography, socioeconomic status, occupation, hobby, etc.
OUTDOOR
Outdoor’s major advantage is geography. Especially now that there is a small revolution in the outdoor space influencing a consumer has never been easier. For example, New York City has been witnessing a fusion of digital and outdoor with digital billboards. Programmatic display billboard will be over major cities in the next 3-4 years. Another revolution has to do with dimensions. Since the very beginning billboards were always 2 dimensional. Our agency Ads For Carts are moving into 3 dimensional space by creating 3D billboards that are even more effective than regular billboard yet they cost one tenth of the regular billboard in New York City.
In case you are currently planning an outdoor campaign we’ve created a really useful DMA Tool which you can find by clicking here. This slick tool will give DMA locations, statistics, and more.
RADIO
Radio will present better targeting opportunities in the next 5 years. The radio is experiencing change that resembles what TV will be in the next 5 years. All radio is transitioning to on-demand consumption experience like Pandora. A lot of radio shows either have a podcasting component to them or are fully in podcast format. In that regard, it is like print where you have the residual advertising value since the purchase of the ad happens ones but it stays in the YouTube/iTunes search engines for years to come.
The age of big radio hosts like Howard Stern is over. People no longer listen to one popular radio host. There is a big trend of segmentation in terms of shows and interests. This is prove by the fact that in the last 2 years all major radio hosts took a pay cut.
DIGITAL
Digital is still the underdog but it will overtake TV in the next 5 years. 77% of people in US have smartphones. These devices track consumer’s location and search history every single day. This makes digital targeting the most accurate targeting of all. Not to mention the Artificial Intelligence that will soon come up with better targeting algorithms that humans can ever come up with. This makes digital the marketing of the future.
Another thing for digital is time. The advertising industry is full of old geezers who don’t even know how to use email properly. Those people have relationships where the digital illiteracy controls what their client chooses to do with the marketing budget. If the advertiser does not recommend digital then it is not even being considered. The good news is once these advertisers are phased out by the Generation X and the Millennials all hell will break loose.