Although many people focus on the ways that it is annoying, advertising is one of the essential functions of our economy. No matter how good the product or service a company provides, if no one ever hears about it, they will not be able to achieve business success. Maybe that is why the United States alone has an advertising agency industry that brings in more than $68 billion every single year!
Of course, many people think about television advertising first when it comes to marketing. However, savvy business owners tend to understand that there are a lot of disadvantages to television advertising.
For a lot of people, television advertising comes to mind first only because of how prominent it is rather than because of how good a strategy it is for helping a business to grow.
So what are the problems with television advertising? Read on to learn all about the most important disadvantages to keep in mind when you are considering television advertising!
Advertising on Television Is Expensive
The first thing to keep in mind about television advertising is that it can cost a lot. Many people have heard of stories about how huge companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just for tiny amounts of air time on television.
As these striking stories go to show, television advertising may not be suitable for businesses with smaller budgets. But what if you have a large enough budget to afford some air time on television? Would it be better to purchase it or to instead spend that budget on other marketing initiatives?
In most cases, television advertising is inefficient. Television advertising provides an incredible breadth of exposure. However, it does not always provide much in the way of depth.
Consider a TV ad that reaches a million different people who are watching television. However, most consumers need to hear about a company almost 10 times before they start to seriously consider purchasing a product or service from them.
That means that reaching a million people a single time each may not have much of an effect at all.
On the other hand, you might reach 10,000 people 10 separate times each. In theory, these results are much worse. After all, we reached 10 times fewer people.
However, this other approach is actually more likely to produce sales than an approach that reaches many people only a single time.
That means that successful advertising on TV can cost even more than people realize. There is often little point in television advertising unless you have the budget to buy many different commercial spots.
Producing Broadcast TV Ads Is Expensive
The cost of buying commercial time on TV is famous. Less famous is how expensive it is to create television advertising content in the first place. In other words, even if you find an amazing deal on airtime, television advertising will drive up your costs when it comes to production.
In particular, television content production is used to working with companies that have already spent huge amounts of money on other kinds of marketing initiatives. That means that most television content production companies are used to charging extremely high prices. That is one more way that television advertising is often inefficient.
Television Advertising Is Inflexible
TV advertising is much less flexible than other kinds of advertising. If you want to change when or how your content is presented, you may not be able to.
It might turn out halfway through an advertising campaign that you would like to shift to a different message. In the world of television advertising, you might be forced to choose between leaving your current campaign as it is or else pulling it completely. You may not have the option to adjust your message or shape your marketing plan according to specific concerns.
The end result is that television advertising is once again more the purview of enormous companies. Companies that have already reached consumers many more than 10 times each often find that television advertising is a good way to remind people that they exist.
However, most companies are dealing with a much smaller audience. It is more important that they be able to differentiate their advertising and content. When the audience shifts, your message should be ready to shift, too. That is why more flexible advertising strategies are so important.
It Is Hard to Track Broadcast Video Advertising
Many other modern advertising techniques allow for the collection of valuable data. However, television advertising is old-fashioned in this respect.
In most cases, you will never really be able to tell how effective a television ad is or isn’t. A company may be able to provide you with the ratings of television channels during the times that your commercial is on. But they will not be able to tell you how many people engaged in a meaningful way with your content.
They won’t be able to tell you what kind of people responded to it most. Nor can they tell you how many people saw the whole thing rather than only a piece of it.
Other advertising techniques allow you to collect much more detailed data so that you can fine-tune your message.
Many People Prefer Streaming Services Over TV
In many ways, television advertising is becoming obsolete. More and more people prefer to watch shows and movies on streaming services. Why deal with commercials at all when there is so much content without them?
That is one more reason that television advertising may not be as effective as it seems.
Understand the Disadvantages of Television Advertising
Television advertising has a tendency to occupy a disproportionate amount of space in the minds of business owners. However, in the vast majority of cases, a marketing budget will go much further dedicated to other advertising initiatives. Television advertising may be prominent in our society, but it is a minor part of the savvy marketing plans of most business owners.
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