Online vs. TV Advertising: Battle for Dollars, Eyeballs, Brand Recall

In years past, television advertising was an essential part of the media mix for any brand seeking build awareness and increase market share. As a marketer with a specialty in online strategies, I have been instrumental in shifting a large portion of my organization’s local television advertising budget to online advertising – search and display.   So of course, I am perched on the edge of my seat as others take the same approach. When a brand pulls from its television budget, I pray for their success because it will further justify my recommendation that we do the very same thing.

So, this week when I saw a post on adage.com about one of my childhood crushes and nerd heroes, Wil Wheaton (aka. Wesley Crusher from Star Trek Enterprise) and his involvement in a fully digital campaign for Newcastle beer, I was intrigued. Newcastle it seems is counting on Wheaton’s reputation, his geekiness about beer, and his built-in following to turn their beer into the beer of choice for nerds everywhere.

While this new campaign featuring Wheaton is funny, interesting and compelling, I wondered if there might have been other studies about the topic of TV vs. online advertising in the past few months. A quick search through academic journals turned up an article in the October issue of the Journal of Marketing Research.

Draganska, Hartmann, and Stanglein (2014) in a comparative study on brand-building via TV vs. online advertising, made one very important conclusion:

“after adjusting for the preexisting differences in brand knowledge by for­mat, we find that all three online formats—banner ads, rich media, and online video—exhibit ad performance that is statistically indistinguishable from TV”
(p. 579).

I had to read that sentence three times for it to really sink in – we now have an academic study that states that TV and online advertising are equal for the purposes of brand building. Wow.

The article also alludes to the fact that while online advertising is now significantly less expensive than TV, as the practice of online advertising matures, costs will likely increase (Draganska, Hartmann & Stanglein, 2014). But for now, as marketers, we have before us the opportunity to build big brands on small budgets. An opportunity that I don’t intend to let pass me by. How about you?

References:

Adage (2014, November 12). Wil Wheaton’ is not actually English for beer: Newcastle’s latest pitch man is a ‘giant beer geek’. Adage. Retrieved from: http://creativity-online.com/work/newcastle-wil-wheaton/37853

Nudd, T. (2014, November 12). Wil Wheaton, giant beer geek, humorously introduces Newcastle’s scotch ale a new beer that ‘does not suck.’ Adweek.

Retrieved from: http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/wil-wheaton-giant-beer-geek-humorously-introduces-newcastles-scotch-ale-161380

Draganska, M., Hartmann, W. R., & Stanglein, G. (2014). Internet versus television advertising: A brand-building comparison. Journal of Marketing Research, 51(5), 578.