Being a consistent sponsor or guest on traditional, mainstream, or Web TV to reach and engage with audiences that equate to your ideal customers may seem like a low-priority expense today when compared to advertising, marketing, and promotion via Facebook ads, Instagram posts, TikTok videos, and Social Media Trends. But when it’s done right, TV can provide immense benefits—helping your business engage, inform, and entertain.
Brilliant Value
Whatever your marketing budget, TV sponsorship/advertising and guest appearances give you three bags full. Did you know that TV is almost half the average price per 30 seconds of YouTube? And 17 times cheaper than other online video advertising? These other forms of video cost advertisers more because of their cost-per-start trading model and the ease with which users can avoid the ads.
And this is before you consider all the other environmental and quality factors that distinguish TV – its high ad completion rates, full-screen viewing, high-quality and brand-safe content, the fact that it is watched so much with other people, all of which influence what matters most: effectiveness.
Makes You KNOWN
Traditional, mainstream, or Web TV turns brands into household names, making you shine in the spotlight and twinkle like a big star. Why is this important? Because being KNOWN is important in advertising. Marketing effectiveness researchers Les Binet and Peter Field have repeatedly shown that campaigns with notoriety at the core of their strategy are easily the most effective at creating large business effects like sales and profit. In fact, they are 50% more likely to create these effects.
TV’s scale and reach are unbeatable. You can’t become KNOWN if no one has heard of you. And brands on TV are making a very public promise, which, as Ogilvy chair Rory Sutherland points out, is powerful in itself: “Public promises carry more weight,” he says, “hence why the words ‘as seen on TV’ are more convincing than ‘as seen on a post on Facebook’.”
The fact that both traditional, mainstream, and online TV is a shared experience also contributes to its BE KNOWN-making power. Viewing TV and its advertisements creates opportunities for personal recommendations, generates conversation, increases memory, and intensifies emotions. Everything you want associated with your brand and business to stay top-of-mind in your customer’s minds.
Signals Success
In all forms of publicity, promotion, and advertising, it’s not just what you say that counts, it’s where and how you say it. In all its forms, TV is proven to be heads, shoulders, knees, and toes above others at driving the strongest fitness, social, popularity and success signals, and to outperform other media at suggesting brand quality, self-confidence, and strength.
The Lowest Risk
Every business and brand worries about the economy. They want visibility & exposure, and reassurance that their media/marketing dollars will deliver results. During the best of times, rolling the dice might be an option. In these times, we choose the safest bets possible on our investments.
While this is difficult to predict and even guarantee, recent research by Gain Theory, MediaCom, Wavemaker, and Mindshare found that the variability of returns differs significantly across different forms of promotion.
On & offline TV emerges as the safest bet: broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) is the least risky of all video channels, delivering just 20% of variance compared with the median return, followed by linear TV with a variability of 24%.
It’s for Everyone
Butchers, bakers, candlestick makers…TV’s reach is extended to everyone: every sponsor/advertiser, every interviewee/guest, every marketing budget, every audience.
In 2022, linear TV and BVOD combined reached 90.3% of the adult population each week. BVOD, in particular, is vital to younger audiences, accounting for 26% of their broadcaster viewing (more than double that of the average viewer).
More and more brands are turning to traditional, mainstream, and online TV to share their messages and reach their ideal customers.
Nielsen Ad Intel reports that, in 2022, 1,286 advertisers used TV for the first time, or returned after five or more years away. This followed 1,243 new sponsors/advertisers in 2021.
Between 2015-2019, the yearly average was significantly lower at 841. This dramatic recent increase (up 50%) demonstrates the increasing appeal of TV to businesses of all shapes and sizes.
It’s also important to note that these aren’t just huge businesses with huge budgets. In 2021, 31% of TV’s sponsors/advertisers spent under $50,000 on TV, and 54% spent below $250,000. Only 29% of all TV advertisers spent more than $1m and only 5% spent above $10m.
With its ability to reach vast audiences, its amazing value, its fame-making power, the opportunity to spread your message, the body language it gives brands and its reliability of return – traditional, mainstream, and online TV helps brands of all shapes and sizes reach the top of the line.