Putting TV to the test

Each year Nielsen partners with the Hong Kong Advertisers Association to make a prediction about how brands will invest their marketing budgets for the following year. It is a well-attended event by agencies and media heads all keen to gauge the mood of marketers and their willingness to spend.

For the past few years the story has remained fairly consistent: digital and mobile are growing, print is on the decline and terrestrial TV, like it or not, continues to command the biggest share of ad budgets. While this year’s story continues that theme, it does so in a climate that seems radically different.

Yes, research shows that TV will still command the lion’s share of ad revenue, despite what seems to be the blatantly obvious fact that terrestrial TV is struggling to grow, and in most cases keep, viewers.

READ: A lack of credible measurement tools are holding back bigger digital budgets

I don’t know about you, but I’m hooked on Netflix and the only thing I use my TV for these days is streaming content, buying movies from iTunes or YouTube and playing host to a growing number of PS4 games. I’m not in the minority on this; pretty much everyone I speak to does the same.

So what about the argument that TV is still the most powerful platform for brand marketing? When was the last time you got excited (or even remembered) a great TV commercial you saw on TV? More than likely it appeared in your Facebook feed or as a pre-roll ad on YouTube.

I really do think that most of the brands people love these days such as Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, Apple, Google and Facebook are not rushing to TV anytime soon for mass market advertising. Those days have well and truly passed.

So yes, while research tells us that TV still gets the biggest ad dollars – you may well want to find out if your consumers are actually there.