A Yardstick Can't Measure Pounds

A Yardstick Can't Measure Pounds

Media, like most codified human endeavors, has its own language. We have always recognized that to outsiders our jargon can seem alien, that it needs explaining. Good media people have always been able to explain their terminology in terms simple enough to be understood by the layman. Implicit in this transaction was that the language was useful and necessary and that it represented a measure of truth. Ratings, reach, frequency, cost per thousand were all measurement methods with denominations that helped us calibrate and represent reality. Now it seems that we can and should questions these fundamental assumptions.

Cost per thousands

We have long used cost per thousands as a measure of the cost effectiveness of a medium. How much does it cost to reach 1000 viewers, readers or listeners? Mindful that every situation is different is negotiated costs and attained audience, we can represent a medium's cost effectiveness with a boxcar number within the bounds of reason. To that end, television in primetime can be said to deliver adults at about a $5.00 CPM. Radio is roughly the same at $5.00 and larger circulation magazines clock in at around $6.25. These are not meant to be definitive, merely illustrative. They essentially say that radio and television deliver more audience than magazines, per dollar spent.

Probing further, we can describe the CPMs for each medium not just on an exposure basis, but also on the basis of ad recall. Here the rough figures are Television $22.22, radio $28.57, magazines$35.71. Put another way, radio is 22% less cost effective than TV in having people recall advertising and magazines are 38% less effective. This all makes a pretty strong case for the master medium.

What you see is not what you get

Recently published research in John Philip Jones' book "The Ultimate Secret of Advertising" reveals that media expenditures on average have an immediate payback in terms of sales of .68 on the dollar. Moreover, there are some pretty wide swings by medium.

Television averages a .49 return, print .91 and radio $1.14. Suddenly the cost effectiv3eness of each medium has been turned inside out. Radio is more than twice as cost effective as television and magazines are almost twice as effective. While this is true for only about three-dozen brands tested and is only an average, the results are so startlingly different than what we are used to in cost effectiveness, that we have to take note. Maybe what we have been seeing all these years is not what we got.

So, here's the point of all this. New research is showing us every day that the world is not as it seemed and that we really have to use each medium for its strengths and avoid or accept, but not overlook, its weaknesses.