Kantar releases Global Media Reactions Report

This week saw the publication of Kantar’s fourth annual “Global Media Reactions” report. As ever, some sensational headlines appeared, most notably “TV slips out of marketers’ top-ranked media channels” being the snippet that seems to have gained the most traction. Just like any other news, however, there is always more to understand than just the attention-grabbing headline.

While TV has long been the home of brand building, its dominance of the media has been on a steady decline, with weekly reach decreasing from 90% in 2017 to 79% in 2023. This makes it understandable that marketers are exploring other channels to drive brand awareness. It’s important to remember, however, that live TV still accounts for almost 60% of all video viewing and over a quarter of 16-34’s time spent with video is still via this channel. There is also still no alternative format that can reach a mass audience of this size simultaneously. Where else would you have found over 7 million people consuming the same thing at the same time as we saw with the Women’s World Cup final?

One claim from Kantar’s report is that a lower percentage of marketers are seeking to increase spend within TV. Given that TV accounts for 60% of all offline spend, it would be hard pushed to find a group of media specialists who were seeking to increase spend into the channel that takes the highest share behind “digital”. TV can still reach large numbers of people, but it seems to have more competition now from other forms of entertainment.

The report also contends that consumers prefer ads that cause the least disruption to their lives, which really isn’t a surprise. Low disruption usually equates to an ad that has low attention or little to no effect. There are some exceptions. Point-of-sale, for example, aids the consumer and informs them, while cinema advertising is part of the experience and therefore an equitable trade-off. The reality is that to impact the consumer, campaigns have to disrupt in order to resonate so a finding that claims consumers prefer ads that cause little to no disruption is essentially the same as consumers saying they don’t like advertising.

The other startling revelation from Kantar was the disconnect between marketers’ top choice of channel vs. the consumer; something we at TSW are already aware of and is fundamental to our human-first methodology. When approaching a brief, we are immune to fads and trends. We plan to the consumer and to elicit the response required to meet the objectives. Therefore, our planners’ top list of channels will always be closely aligned with consumer consumption and interaction, avoiding expensive and inefficient plans rather than what’s truly effective.

Kantar’s report has been hugely criticised as despite it being a global survey revealing the top-ranking media brands for marketers and consumers, it excluded local media brands like Sky, ITV and Channel 4. They argue the report findings are based on “people scoring brands”, focusing on overall brand experience rather than on advertising qualities.

To summarise, not many people in the industry agree with the report and feel that by excluding on-demand and focusing only on linear TV, it failed to look at TV as a whole. The collective reach potential for all TV advertising – both established UK broadcasters and new players such as subscription streamers – will continue to offer the mass scale that advertisers require from it.

What is clear is that the report requires more digging and understanding behind the sources of the claims. The data used for the research report arguably falls short compared to the calibre of Radio Centre’s “Re-evaluating Media Report” which had a detailed overview of methodology and sample.

Out-of-Home (OOH) on road to recovery

OOH was unsurprisingly a channel hit hard by the pandemic; a time when we were urged to stay inside, with less time commuting to the office and being out and about during the week.

So, it was incredibly positive to see Outsmart, the trade body for the OOH market, reporting solid advertising revenue growth across H1 2023 with a 4.7% year-on-year increase, taking us to just 3% below 2019 levels.

While some growth has been seen in classic formats, the majority of growth was in digital OOH (DOOH) which now accounts for 64% of total revenue. Interestingly, according to Ofcom’s recent “Media Nation’s Study”, DOOH now reaches higher levels of the population than commercial TV viewing (83% vs 79%).

With OOH vendors having re-invested so much of their revenue back into maintaining and upgrading existing sites as well as into public infrastructure such as bus shelters and telephone boxes to ensure the product is as high quality and high tech as possible, it’s good to see this starting to pay off.

The rise of DOOH also creates more opportunities for brands to become even more targeted, efficient, and reactive with their use of OOH, opening the channel up to advertisers who may not have considered it before.

We should also mention the rise of “fake” OOH ads which have been hard to avoid on LinkedIn. This is an example of how OOH can be done exceptionally well, creating impact and a “wow” factor like no other. The adverts also show the link between special build, DOOH and its amplification on social media. This is something Ocean Outdoor has spoken about a lot and even invested in neuroscience research behind the topic. It’s debatable if creating the ads and putting them out there is the “right” thing to do but it’s a great showcase of what’s possible in OOH even if it’s not always possible in real life.

Radio Centre launches needs-based planning tool

Working in complete harmony with TSW’s human-first planning methodology, Radiocentre has recently launched a new, free-to-use needs-based audio planning tool for commercial radio.

The idea is to encourage us to think beyond standard demographic targeting and adopt a more sophisticated need-states-based approach to audio planning. Using qualitative and quantitative data, it looks at the need-state of different audiences such as ‘lift my mood’, ‘keep me company’, and ‘keep me in the loop’ and identifies how advertisers could tailor their use of ad formats and messaging in order to maximize effectiveness.

When combined with aligned creative strategies, it’s suggested that this approach can significantly enhance the overall campaign performance. This is something brands should be thinking about across all channels, ensuring the creative feels as relevant to the audience as possible at that moment for maximum effectiveness.