Attribution in Traditional Media

In a recent article, AdAge describes how attribution has become the buzzword in the marketing industry as companies try to quantify their return on marketing spend. Given the wide array of options available to reach and engage consumers, the TV ad business is on a mission to prove that running spots on television actually drives business value for marketers and should continue to be a large part of marketing plans.

With the focus on attribution, major TV players have introduced new ad products that will guarantee business outcomes. TV ads traditionally guaranteed that a certain demographic would see the ad, but in recent years the focus has shifted to more granular targeting, and now there are ad buys that guarantee you’ll reach a certain household income or even interest in buying a new car. In 2018, several TV network groups took it a step further and began guaranteeing business outcomes such as ticket sales for a movie or increase in store traffic.

While this is certainly a step in the right direction for TV networks, I think there’s still a lot of work to be done in order for TV to truly compete in a digital marketing world. With digital marketing, data is constantly flowing, allowing marketers to make real-time optimizations as they learn what’s working and what’s not. This approach of “guaranteeing performance” sounds great, but it is very passive in nature. I think that if networks aren’t able to offer the ability to optimize throughout the lifetime of campaign, they will continue to see a contraction in their business as large digital players like Facebook and Google capture a larger portion of marketing campaign budgets.