Sure, television’s good for vegging out to The Walking Dead and Fuller House marathons, but does TV advertising still make sense in the days of digital, DVRs, and click-happy consumers? We’ve rounded up the research, and the results may surprise you. Not only is TV still an incredibly effective platform for reaching consumers, but it also earns top ratings when it comes to driving home improvement leads. We’re counting down five reasons why home improvement marketers should be tuning into television.
1. TV drives immediate responses.
It’s true that traditional television viewing habits are on the decline. However, this doesn’t mean people are not watching television. Rather, that they’re watching it differently.
According to a study from from Accenture, not only are more and more people abandoning televisions to watch their favorite shows on secondary devices, but a whopping 87 percent of consumers use more than one device at a time. The most heavily used companion to the TV? Smartphones.
In our instant gratification-minded, multitasking society, this has huge implications for advertisers: When TV viewers see an interesting ad, they can –and do! — immediately turn to their secondary devices for more information.
2. Local broadcasts are DVR-proof.
While DVR and “on demand” options have changed the way people watch TV, one particular aspect of television-watching remains immune to these trends: the news. Because people prefer to watch local news broadcasts live, this makes them captivate audiences for advertising.
Now consider that nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults watch their local television news, and the top third of these watch for an average of 32 minutes a day, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. If they’re not seeing your commercials, whose are they seeing?
3. Cable offers targeted advertising.
HGTV improved its way into the top 10 of cable networks in 2014, and continued its ascent in 2015 claiming the 9th place spot among total viewers. Not only that, but as the majority of cable entertainment networks trended downward, HGTV was in the very select few to experience viewership growth — at a staggering 12 percent rate. Meanwhile, HGTV’s kissing cousin, the DIY Network, is also coming on strong, having experienced its best-ever rate of growth in early 2016.
What does this mean for advertisers? A targeted audience at their fingertips. After all, people don’t just watch these shows because of the adorableness of Chip and Joanna Gaines. They also watch to get ideas for their own home improvement projects. In other words, serving up targeted advertising to this specific demographic of viewers makes smart sense.
4. Good commercials work.
There’s a reason why marketers are willing to pay the big bucks for Super Bowl commercials. They work. In fact, according to research from MarketShare, television advertising outperformed digital across a breadth and depth of key performance indicators (KPIs). How much so? Television bested the sales lift of digital four times over.
While this can be partly attributed to MarketShare VP of Strategy Isaac Weber’s assertion that “TV is the giant megaphone” when it comes to getting a message out, another factor facilitates the unique ways in which commercials engage consumers. Think of it this way: When the goal is to evoke a response and generate consumer resonance, commercials offer something many other platforms don’t: an immersive, visually powerful connection. Not to mention: Who doesn’t want to see a product or service in action before buying?
5. Programmatic TV is a game-changer.
Data drives nearly everything we do in today’s heavily digital landscape, and it’s poised to invade the television industry in the form of programmatic advertising. While in the past ratings systems like Nielsen forced advertisers into purely reactive roles, programmatic television advertising inverts the relationship by giving marketers the power of specificity. Advertisers no longer have to rely on ratings to determine which audiences are watching. Instead, they can use data to optimize exactly who sees their advertising.
And while programmatic TV advertising is still in its infancy, advertising insiders predict an impending explosion.
There’s a reason — well, five of them — why four-fifths of contemporary companies consider TV advertising a necessary part of their lead generation strategies. Not only does this popular platform continue to reign as supremely as “Must-See” Thursday night TV did back in the 90s, but programmatic advertising promises that it will be an even greater player moving forward. Our strong advice? Don’t count television out yet. (Even if that whole Fuller House thing was a bust.)
