Deloitte unaware of Facebook, Google in research on impact of different media?

Consumer research on use and perception of TV and other media

Recommended research: On TV: perspectives on television in words and numbers - Deloitte/YouGov

Value: [rating=3]

Our commentary: This research has been widely reported in the UK newspapers and online with print journalists using it to knock the Internet - always a favourite. It's staggering that they don't mention that the research was commissioned for presentation at the recent Edinburgh TV Festival... I wonder why?

It's a classic example of developing a methodology to make the statistics fit the story you want to tell. In its press release Deloitte state that "Online advertising struggles to make an impression" and that "television advertising still packs the greatest punch" and elsewhere "Advertising on television, still the nation"€™s favourite format".

FWIW Here's some of the major flaws in the methodology and reporting in my view:

• 1 The effectiveness of different media is self-reported by end-users based on their perceptions, quite different from evaluation of actual impacts in awareness and response from established cross-media optimisation studies (XMOS) from the US
• 2 The research asked about the SINGLE most memorable ad campaign this year - I didn't see this acknowledged in the reporting which was generalised to ALL TV and Print ads have the greatest impact. Perhaps that was the intention of the researchers.
• 3 Users weren't asked about the impact of Google Adwords or other search text ad formats which account for 60%+ of UK ad spend.
• 4 The impact of earned media through online communities like Facebook and Twitter wasn't acknowledged in the survey or to any extent in the analysis
• 5 The actual investment by advertisers in online media isn't mentioned. Current Internet media ad spend is over 20% of total ad spend according to the IAB/PwC Ad Spend research
• 6 The report also showed that 86% of viewers reguarly skipped ads on their PVRs, but this was glossed over in the press release and exec summary, although many journalists did pick up on this.

Marketing implications: Always check the methodology and sample for reported statistics. But remember that digital media still only accounts for 20% of all media, so offline media have their role. Integration is still the name of the game.