Tag: advertising
Audience is Killing Advertising
by blogadmin on Apr.08, 2010, under Media Mavens
by Erwin Ephron
It’s Media Malpractice — which may sound medical, but it defines the problem.
Media exposures share an ambiguity with medical exposures. Just as we can be exposed to the flu and not catch it, we can be exposed to a TV commercial and not see it. That is a major flaw in our measurement system.
A media exposure is someone seeing or hearing a media vehicle that is carrying advertising and not necessarily someone seeing or hearing an ad. This means some of the reported audience will not be reached by the advertising. Wouldn’t it be better to have “contact with the ad” as the standard currency measurement for media?
Well, that has happened in Out-of-Home. Out of Home’s new EYES ON definition of exposure is “eye-contact with the advertising.” . . . and it is available today for planning, buying and selling the medium.
Out-of-Home’s new EYES ON measurement is a major advance in media research thinking. It converts Opportunity to See into people SEEING ads . . . And uses that as its currency measure.
But why let it stop with Out-of-home? The measurement techniques pioneered by Out of Home should be applied to other media. All media should be reporting audience noticing advertising.
Advertisers are demanding accountability . . . but Advertising won’t be accountable until it provides more realistic estimates of people actually reached by advertising.
For this reason alone, I think adjusted data is far more responsible than the current misleading numbers we use today. Yet we continue to look at ways of improving the numbers we spend by, as a competitive advantage, not as an urgent industry need. And that is institutionalized ‘Media Malpractice’.
Audience is Killing Advertising. . . Let’s make it stop.
Erwin Ephron
The Ephron Consultancy