At last week’s ARF conference, comScore’s Gian Fulgone and a panel of advertising and marketing executives had a lively panel discussion on the state of online advertising, including the now almost inevitable discussion on such panels of why more dollars haven’t proportionally followed the increased consumer time spent online, most notably from TV.  After all, online advertising is more targetable, interactive, has the user at the point of sale in many instances, now delivers more GRPs in aggregate then television, and perhaps what online salespeople like to tout the most, provides more detailed metrics at a census level versus the arguably antiquated panel metrics employed by Nielsen for measuring TV. 

The answer, it seems, is that for mass marketing advertisers, they know that TV drives offline sales, and for CPG’s who’ve been studying the impact of TV on sales for years, does so with a high level of predictability.  If a marketer runs X number of GRPs in a market, they know they can reasonably expect Y lift in offline sales.  Media Mix Model studies and use of consumer panels ala A.C. Nielsen or IRI have provided this assurance to marketers for their TV spends.  While there is a small but growing body of evidence to suggest that online video advertising is as effective if not more effective in lifting brand awareness metrics than TV, there is an even smaller body of evidence that online efforts lift offline sales.  Spending levels online haven’t reached a point where they are reliably measurable in MMM or other offline sales studies for many advertisers.  Additionally, the level of predictability with respect to the lift in sales online delivers doesn’t yet match TV.

So for me, there are two key take aways from this current state of the media landscape: (1) Bashing TV as an advertising medium is not in anyone’s interest when making the case for online. Rather, it can be a potent compliment to TV. And (2) advertisers should consider spending in online in a way that will insure they are getting enough reach there to have those online efforts show up and be measurable in whatever offline sales research they are conducting.  Anecdotally, I believe the advantages of online media will continue to improve it’s efficacy over time and increasingly give TV a real run for its money.  Let’s not slow that progress by being negative on other media or too timid in the investments made in online to be able to prove its efficacy and make that efficacy predictable.

- Gian Lombardi