Well, here’s a shocker. A survey of 2,023 people for Deloitte’s forthcoming Media Democracy report suggests TV advertising is twice as effective as online ads. Some 84 percent of consumers said telly ads would influence them to buy a product – against just 45 percent for online ads. So, whilst advertisers get more guarantees and better bang for their buck online, especially in the downturn, users seemingly find it easy to simply ignore web ads. What’s more, Deloitte’s survey was conducted online.
What’s the problem? Some 64 percent of respondents said any kind of internet ads are more intrusive than newspaper ads and 26 percent said they’re prepared to pay for web content just to avoid online ads – though whether their promise would be kept outside of a survey environment is difficult to gauge. Half said they would click on web ads if they were targeted or offered free content.
Bucking the theory that web ads are more effective than newspaper ads – as testified by the migration of ad spend from print to web – respondents rated newspapers just as likely as online to influence their consumer habits, with 45 percent saying it influences purchases, but magazine ads more effective, on 54 percent.
The survey results would suggest that just about everything we’ve learned about the relative value of ads across different media is wrong. Indeed, for all the growth in the web ads boom of the last seven years, few but Google are making the big bucks; online news publishers certainly aren’t. One possible effect is that brands take advantage of rock-bottom TV ad rates to up their commitment to that medium (the current PG Tips commercial runs to a whopping 90 seconds and is in high rotation).