Mobile Fix: Getting TV ads to cut through is bigger challenge than ever
Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, says that while TV has hung onto eyeballs, TV advertising has lost the war for attention…
2Screen TV
Lots of people wrote off traditional TV but the medium goes from strength to strength, with growing ad revenues and healthy audience figures – both driven to a certain extent by the event shows like The X Factor.
Cynical people would suggest the rise in TV revenues and the continued lag in spend on digital (there is a $50 billion opportunity for digital if the share or revenue matched the share of time) is because ‘jackofalltrade’ agencies make all their money through TV campaigns. Especially when there is very credible data from comScore and DunnHumby proving that online can be just as effective as TV in driving sales of FMCG products. But the audience for live TV is very good – even with the huge installed base of PVRs.
But perhaps things aren’t as rosy as people would have you believe. Deloitte has produced some interesting research to show how common multitasking is;
A full 42% of American consumers surf the internet while watching the television, 29% talk on their phones while the TV is on and 26% of consumers are texting or sending IMs. (Ofcom data shows similar behaviour in the UK)
Our view is that whilst TV has hung onto eyeballs, TV advertising has lost the war for attention.
Getting TV ads to cut through is bigger challenge than ever. So the 2screen opportunity is really interesting. We know that a major reason for multitasking is sharing comments around live event shows – but can brands use mobile to create more cut through and real engagement?
The new Honda ad from Weiden & Kennedy – which breaks today in the UK – is a really interesting attempt at this. Using sound to sync the mobile with the film, they use a similar technique to the Japanese butterfly app we mentioned last week – enabling viewers to ‘capture’ characters from the ad on their mobile. We really like this but suspect the interaction is more likely to happen with the film on YouTube than in live viewing.
This use of sound to connect mobiles to TV (in the way Shazam is trialing Direct Response in the US) and to places (like the ShopKick box in stores) is going to be a big trend going forward.
WebApps – the time has come
In a week when we learnt that around a quarter of apps are only ever opened once, could it be that webapps are the smart way forward?
Essentially these are what we have been describing as thin apps – ones that combine the reach of the mobile web with some of the richness of a native app.
Mobile guru Ajit Jaoker has done lots of work looking at this area.
Our preferred solution right now is an iPhone app (if the audience merits it) together with a webapp for smartphones and a basic mobile website for everyone else. Maximum reach and pretty close to maximum richness too. Where cost is an issue you can just go for the webapp and the mobile site.
And crucially this means you can unlock the value of mobile search for your brand. Typically we find between 5% and 10% of website traffic is mobile, yet the chances are the site doesn’t work on mobile. And we often find that the search guys have left mobile search turned on – effectively reducing overall search performance by between 5% and 10%. Even if it is turned off the lost volume means you’re still reducing the efficiency of your search.
Fixing mobile search will usually ‘save’ enough to pay for the mobile website in a matter of months – and often enough for the webapp too.
Our Friend @mutlu82 has collected lots of examples of mobile sites to show just how flexible this solution can be.
So there is really no reason for people to procrastinate about mobile anymore.
Facebook Deals land in Europe
A few months after the initial hype Europeans can now use Facebook deals. With opening offers from Argos, Starbucks, Mazda and others in the UK this is a great opportunity for brands to get scale at no cost – Facebook don’t charge for deals in any way at the moment.
Getting 20% off the price of a Mazda MX5 looks like a great deal – but as we’ve talked about before, the science of sales promotion comes into play here. No-one who wasn’t about to buy a sports car is going to do so because of this – and you could probably get 20% off the sticker price anyway. But this deal positions Mazda as a brand that get’s it, drives some hype – and might tempt people who are about to buy a competitive brand to reconsider Mazda. And through the competition to win a 5 month loan of the car, just by checking in at the dealer, it drives showroom traffic and builds a valuable permission database of prospective customers. This space is going to get very busy.
And whilst the sheer scale of Facebook makes life harder for the other brands in this space, there is still FourSquare. This space is still new and brands should be experimenting with a range of partners to maximise learnings.
There is some smart thinking around privacy and Facebook – making the point that the key thing about social and digital is that we’re starting to go back to living the way we used to. Your friends and neighbours used to know lots about you – that’s what communities have always been about; shared knowledge and shared values. Layer on top of that the ability to have a real dialogue between brands and people – just like it used to be at your local shop – and the modern world looks quite a lot like the way things were.
Google pushing Android hard
Getting developers to build for your platform is a key strategy for players like Nokia, Microsoft, RIM and many others. Whilst Apple have got everyone’s attention and consequently a stream of cool new apps that exploit their operating system, others have to work harder.
Now Google is getting into this game by recruiting developers to build apps for Android – and they’re focused on people who already have ideas for apps.
This reflects a real hunger amongst the Google people to speed up growth of Android app purchases. The new Android 3 OS – called Gingerbread – should help. They have, crucially, fixed the Android Market app store and launched a new mobile service called Google Body.
This is essentially Google Earth focused on the human body. Does anyone remember the 1960s Raquel Welch movie Incredible Voyage – great opportunity for a mashup here.
Digital content
My 11 year old son Ethan tells me that his favourite way to listen to music is to find the YouTube video on his iPod Touch. New Forrester research suggests that this mobile centric behaviour is common among digital natives and the music business has no clue what to do.
With the Murdoch iPad only newspaper The Daily launching in the US (we can’t understand why it isn’t available here too) the battle for who makes money from content is hotting up.
Apple have flexed their muscles and denied Sony the right to charge for content outside of iTunes – unless they offer the option to pay through iTunes too. All those people who use apps to display content and the pass the user onto a website to charge are probably getting nervous. Think about Amazon with Kindle.
We did a big piece of strategy work last year on eBooks and it was clear to us that none of the big players (GAFA) will allow another to tax them for access to their platform.
So we don’t see that Amazon will ever let Apple (or Facebook) get involved in how they charge their customers. So an interesting question arises; if Kindle comes off the Apple system who loses most – Amazon or Apple?
Remembering that old saying your enemies enemy is your friend, we expect Android would make Amazon very welcome. This particular space is going to get even more heated as the OFT start to investigate the pricing of eBooks in the UK.
By the way, we agreed to the latest version of the iTunes Ts&Cs yesterday – but didn’t have time to read all 57 pages so we’re not sure what we agreed to.
Finally
We’re getting out and about again, speaking at agencies and other businesses to share our thinking on mobile. And we have some public events coming up too; In March, I’m chairing the MediaTel Mobile event, which was so good last year and keynoting at the Mobile for the Cultural Sector event. Both have got great speaker line ups and are well worth attending.
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Your Comments
Carping is a great word but I wanted to check its precise definition – which seems to be that it means petty and unjustified criticism.
Is it really petty to point out the huge degree of multitasking that occurs whilst watching TV? It’s a significant fact about TV that doesn’t seem to get much coverage on the Thinkbox site.
Is it unjustified to say people don’t pay attention to advertising? We actually seem to agree on that one.
We also agree that Robert Heath’s seminal work on Low Involvement Processing is still a good model of how communications work.
I actually think his thinking explains the effectiveness of online advertising – remember Comscore and Dunn Humby have produced proof that online is just as effective as TV at driving sales of CPG products – at significantly lower cost.
And I’m sure we both agree that great creative AV can and does cut through – although I’d argue the focus is switching from paid media to earned media like YouTube… But you might think I’m carping again so lets bring another voice into the debate;
I predict that the… universal affair which advertisers have with television will eventually come to an end.
TV has survived the arrival of multi-channel mainly because of its supposed ability to get the attention of the consumer, but once it is realised how inefficient it is at doing this then people will start to examine the cost/return equation much more closely.
A significant number will realise that the simple messages and concepts can be communicated just as well in other media and the drain will start.
Recognise it? It’s by Robert Heath, from the summary of his paper on Low Involvement Processing. Maybe he’s carping too?
Peace Out.
I stand by my carping comment, Simon, because I do think that trying to make a negative out of 2-screening is unjustified criticism, for reasons already explained.
We both have vested interests for all to see, you in mobile and me in TV, but I’m not the one criticising the other medium. On the contrary, Thinkbox is excited about the potential for TV + mobile.
If you don’t think there’s much on the Thinkbox website about this phenomenon then you haven’t looked properly. Last year we did some research about TV + social media, and there’s a whole section called The Virtual Sofa, which is about 2-screening. There are whole films for downloading about how TV works with online advertising or TV via web here – and we did a feature on the new Honda work the moment it broke.
We’ve recently completed our Tellyporting research where we actually supplied people with a smartphone that could interact with their TVs; we’ll come and present it to you if you like. At its launch we had Utku Can, founder of the 2 Screen event, who is creative director at Mint Digital where they specialise in 2nd screen creativity that interacts with TVs, whether programmes or ads.
TV has not just survived but thrived in the multi-channel age because it works. That’s why TV’s share of advertising (total not just display) has grown for the last three years. That’s why online brands spend 70% of their ad money on TV because, ‘attention’ or not, TV produces instant and visible spikes in web traffic. Thinkbox however believes that TV works best in conjunction with other media, mobile included, and we promote integration vigorously. We think that’s the best advice to give advertisers.
I’m not criticising TV Tess – I’m just pointing out some of the challenges that 2 screen creates – like getting cut through for ads when peoples’ attention is focused elsewhere. As ever, smart people see challenges as opportunities and the Honda campaign is a great example of this.
We totally share your belief that mobile and TV is a powerful combination.
Having worked on lots of integrated campaigns I totally get the contribution TV can and does make. l was part of the team that put FT.com on TV in 2000 – one of the first online brands to use TV – and also saw just how powerful TV was with Howard from the Halifax.
We’ve lots of experience of how TV can drive interaction – from good old red button, mobile shortcodes and spikes in search and look forward to doing the same with apps on connected TV.
No single medium is the answer anymore and the brands that really understand the challenges of this emerging 2 screen ecology will be the ones that find ways to really profit from it. And that should be good for both of us.
Perhaps we should discuss over a large glass of something red.
It’s such a shame that Simon has used the rather wonderful Honda TV + mobile app innovation to have a dig at attention to TV ads.
Anyone who has read all the science behind low attention processing will know that attention is not necessary for effective communication; we call it the Derren Brown effect.
In fact, attention can sometimes impede effectiveness because it engages the cognitive brain where ideas are rationally assessed and sometimes rejected. Attention is vital for things that involve text (print and online) because we are decoding strange symbols whereas AV works without this.
I would tentatively suggest that we pay attention to very few ads, whatever the medium, and we never have done, but it doesn’t stop them working.
The potential for TV + mobile is huge and exciting, from brand engagement to e-commerce; this is something to celebrate not an excuse to carp.
My question to Simon would be, if TV ads don’t work how come you’re expecting people to pick their mobiles to interact with them?
TV engagement (not attention) is the single biggest individual catalyst for mobile activity during two screening whether social and search. Feel the love.