ORLANDO, FL: Television retains its leading role as a channel for the long-term building of brands, according to a study by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the trade body, and Forrester, the research firm.

Jim Nail, a Principal Analyst at Forrester, discussed some initial findings from this study – which was based on a survey of 126 brand marketers – during a session at the ANA’s 2018 Media Conference.

One insight from the analysis: “TV is still unchallenged for its effectiveness in long-term brand-building objectives.” (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: Has the future of addressable and advanced television (finally) arrived?)

More specifically, traditional TV was regarded as a key medium for building brands by 70% of the sample, beating out social media sites (52%), over-the-top-services (49%), and online video sites (46%).

By contrast, the legacy medium disappointed when the consideration was short-term sales, where 63% of participants praised social-media sites, compared with the 55% that selected traditional television.

Elsewhere, Nail found “a little unbalance” when he compared not just the current use but the plan to increase/decrease investment in television and its digital-media alternatives over the next two years.

In the Forrester/ANA analysis, traditional television (–35%) and television-network websites (–17%) registered the biggest drops when looking to the future of audience engagement.

Only 27% of the traditional-television advertisers expected their spending will increase, versus social-media sites (72%), online-video sites (66%) and over-the-top services (63%).Turning to addressable TV ads, some 15% of the panel had embraced this strategy, and moved beyond testing to include this tactic “regularly” as part of their media buys – one of the report’s most revealing findings.

Even more impressive is the kind of stickiness recorded by those addressable adherents: “86% are very likely to continue doing it,” Nail said.

“Clearly those experiments are paying off. They’re learning that it works, that it’s an effective approach, and a way to improve TV performance.”

Additionally, advanced TV ads – which use data about viewers to provide richer information about the audience of a program, daypart, or network – had been adopted by 17% of the ANA/Forrester contributors.

“We are finally at the inflection point of change in the market. There is enough momentum behind these new ways of buying that we’re going to accelerate how these [tools] reach into the industry, bringing more and more advertisers along with them,” Nail said.

Sourced from WARC