Marketers are Clueless About Media Effectiveness

Radiocentre and ebiquity’s new report forensically lays bare marketers’ perceptions about which channels perform best, and the extent to which they are divorced from reality.

Radiocentre – the group charged with promoting the use of radio as a commercial medium in the UK – hired communications consulting firm Ebiquity to review the state of marketing media in 2018. The media examined in the study are the 10 major channels that account for the vast majority of advertising in this country: direct mail, magazines, newspapers, online display, online video, out-of-home, radio, social media and TV.

Media like radio and newspapers are dismissed far too easily by marketers, who need to open their minds to the real possibilities.

Ebiquity’s challenge was to compare the perceptions of advertisers and agencies on various advertising media with the reality of what each of these media channels actually offers, according to third-party assessment.

It is clear that there are four main drivers for media selection.

  1. Marketers are looking for clear targeting cut-through
  2. The ability to show strong ROI
  3. Positive emotional response to the message
  4. Increased brand salience at the same time.

Want to see what happened? Let me skip to the end

This is a fantastic article. I just have two comments on it:

  • It is not marketers who are clueless, but a whole bunch of pseudo-marketers who go by "social media expert" and similar specializations
  • In all seriousness, I think that the article (and the research) completely undervalue the importance of the message. You can have a fantastic message on mediocre media and it will generate results. Or, you can have a crappy message on the best media in the world and it will not generate results.

At Iffective, we believe in evidence-based marketing. That's it.