Media Comparison & Ratings

Media fragmentation can and has crippled traditional advertising and the mentality of “I’ve been placing newspaper, TV and radio for decades. Why stop what works?”

Why stop what you’ve been doing for decades?  Well the world is completely different.  Do you get your news or find out sports scores the same way you did 20 years ago…of course not so why would you continue to spend your marketing dollars in the same way?

Dollars follow eyes.  They always have and they always will and with a decreasing amount of eyes on newspapers, TV and radio (despite their ratings) you can you project growth in your business without changing where you’re budget is spent.  The best possible marketing mix for most local small businesses is a mix of social media / online, billboards, geofencing and if you are steadfast on your old channels then mix in a bit of radio.  I’ll get into GeoFencing in a bit but for now let’s break down some rating issues facing advertisers today.

Breakdown TV Ratings:

Nielsen will count ratings based on ‘TVs On’ meaning they don’t know or care if anyone is watching, they don’t care if they change the channel during commercials or if there is only 1 person watching the TV.  They’ll still assume everyone in the house is watching the TV and all commercials.  I don’t need to insult you by saying you know this never happens.

What’s more is they base this number on a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of the population, we’re talking .02%.

With that said, it is a widely accepted use of measurement so it’s the best we’ve got…

Breakdown Radio Ratings:

Audited by the same company, Nielsen, these are similar problems, they are not counting the issues with changing channels or listening to online radio like Pandora.  Consumers are moving, they’re all over the place and they don’t even know where they are or what they just listened too.  We live in an age of hurry up and find out what’s next.

On top of all this there are dozens of radio stations in most markets and there are 6 day-parts per station.  Radio itself is fragmented and then there are 47% of Americans report to listening to Online radio and 27% say they use it in lieu of regular radio in the car.

Again, there are still advantages here and it’s mostly that it’s inexpensive to produce the commercial and high frequency.

Breakdown of Online Ratings

Ummm… it’s the wild west.  We judge on what Google Analytics says and honestly, they’ve been known to inflate their ratings.  Then let’s go down the click-bot route or the ad blockers that people use all the time.

Look, it gets results and I actually encourage money here, Facebook ads may just be the best bet out there right now for lead gen but you’re still bleeding money from fake clicks and ad blockers.

Breakdown OOH Ratings:

OOH gets it’s ratings a completely different company called GeoPath and they utilize a system that takes into account a number of things which includes traffic count but it’s also based on the average number of people in a car in that market, how far the ad is off the road, left hand-read / right-hand read and turn of the road.

So on any billboard that is off-the-road you will lose 25% of the impression number simply because it’s not right overhead like an exit sign.  Most locations are like this, I’ve seen one in the Bronx, NY that was right overhead.  NYC allows for a lot of things that most markets do not, including strip club and adult store advertising.

These numbers are really the most accurate in the auditing space, it’s a real ad with real eyeballs and we can precisely measure traffic and pedestrians.  There’s no bot driving down the road (yet).

Download my “How Do We Know” Info Guide: GeoPath One Sheet

Hope this helps.