Industry observer Ben Shepherd recently wrote about how “non platform” media can better compete with the likes of Google and Meta.

His central theme is the global platforms have integrated themselves into client workflow, extracting a heap of data from their advertisers’ properties, i.e. pretty much all of it. They then use that data to reinforce the effectiveness for their own ad products to sell more – both to the advertiser and, in aggregate, to their competitors.

It’s an ingenious feedback loop that thrives by treating outputs as inputs, ignoring other media inputs and using clients’ own data to inform pricing models – take what’s working and hike the price. Over and over again.

At Adgile, as an independent total video analytics company, we clearly see the value that video delivers to the performance of search and web traffic – day in and day out.

One of our earliest analytics solutions tracked an advertiser’s TV audience against their web traffic in real-time. The consistent result was that immediately after a commercial went to air, web traffic surged – and, funnily enough, that almost all of that increase in traffic was credited to search!

Rather than search being viewed as a necessary online “toll”, platform analytics represented it as the source of the traffic, and over time search has become the media input, with web traffic the business output. The fact that search was clearly a direct result of TV advertising, was lost in the platforms self-reporting.  

Advertisers are encouraged to spend more on search to drive better outcomes – the “magic” (or misdirection) of last-touch web attribution.  

Weaponised analytics, combined with a self-serve platform, has made spending millions of dollars as easy as ordering Uber Eats.

Where has all the video money gone?

In just the last decade, collectively Google, Meta and Amazon have gone from being about 20 per cent of the Australian ad market to nearly 50 per cent whilst growing their global revenue streams as much as tenfold.

It would be interesting to see how many advertisers have seen similar growth over this same period.

Over just the last two years we’ve seen nearly $600 million come out of the broadcast TV market. The vast majority of this money hasn’t followed audience to BVOD / SVOD or even YouTube… It’s been funnelled into search, social and ecommerce.

So, has this been a good result for advertisers?

Based on countless global academic studies, attention metrics, and the learned experience of seasoned CMOs, there’s little support for swapping out TV/video advertising for search and social. 

Locally, ThinkTV’s 2021 study with WPP’s Gain Theory demonstrated a long-term 18x return for every dollar spent on “television” – compared to 12x for search. 

I can’t think of a study in the last 25 years that hasn’t championed the power of video from a brand point of view.

Marketing science is a powerful argument, but money is still moving faster than audience declines justify. Why is this?

The key reason appears to be that tough economic conditions are forcing marketers to optimise investment to demonstrated outcomes. And although the argument for longer term brand benefit is powerful, it doesn’t come close to the black and white ROI reported, real time, by the digital platforms.

So live ROI and outcomes, versus “brand benefit”.  There appears to be only one winner here…

“Television” must be smarter with their analytics

There is a clear opportunity for television (broadcast, BVOD and SVOD), to level the playing field here, and for advertisers to better optimise marketing investment.  Embracing the power of real-time response data and providing a reporting platform that enables advertisers to measure in-campaign ROI, and elevates total television to a platform level.

It’s not about switching from the brand story to a performance story, it’s about proving both – that television works right through the funnel.

Using website pixels, or predictive analytics (share of search and web traffic), live tracking of video performance can offer marketers leverage at the boardroom table, by reporting immediate and ongoing return on investment, in addition to brand uplift studies and more traditional television metrics.

We’ve seen clear intent from Nine, Seven and Foxtel in this space with last year’s Upfronts announcements – it will be interesting to see how this plays out – particularly with the lean towards MMM (where, of course, Google and Meta’s open source offerings dominate).

At Adgile we recognise the value of modelling for marketers and advertisers. Our recent work with the Video Futures Collective used AI-based mix modelling to demonstrate the power television has to drive business outcomes and incremental return.

Measurement over modelling 

But we also need to recognise the difference between modelling and measurement.

Adgile uses proprietary technology to track television activity against web visits, and measure the outcome in granular detail. We can identify, in real-time, what’s working best across multiple dimensions from creative and messaging to day part and day of week, channel, duration and more, allowing in-campaign optimisation of activity and maximisation of return.

We consistently see web site engagement rates, within response window, sitting in the 1-2 per cent range from linear TV, and from 2-3 per cent for BVOD / SVOD across our pool.

These numbers might not seem breathtaking, but my maths suggests that equates to a “television cost per click” of about $2 – at the lower end of average search costs. When measured, television is a highly competitive, performance medium.

And of course, there are significant other benefits to television advertising – mass reach, creating both brand awareness, and new customers. Filling the funnel for later not just “harvesting” those currently in the market for your product.

With prices increasing across both search and social (+10 per cent YOY according to Wordstream in the US last September for search, and Meta’s average ad cost up 12 per cent for the year) it’s important that marketers have a clear view of what’s actually driving their web activity and consumer enquiries, particularly if it’s also shifting their brand metrics at the same time.

Imagine building “television” into the customer journey and having it reflected in your Google Analytics. We think you can. We think you should.

In today’s media landscape, granular response data is key to a marketer’s decision making, particularly if it can be delivered in real time. With revenue only flowing one way at the moment, the introduction of “television analytics” would benefit both brands and the media owner.

More importantly, it would allow a better view of television’s contribution to driving consumers right through the marketing funnel and ensure that television as a medium isn’t bringing a water pistol to the analytics gunfight.

Richard Hunwick is Chief Commercial Officer at Adgile.