While brands are aware that they must prioritise digital, this doesn’t mean that traditional marketing methods are on the decline.

In fact, the opposite is true, as TV advertising still takes top spot when it comes to brands’ marketing priorities. Although we may have believed digital to be the focus, TV in fact accounted for 37% of ad spend in the US in 2015, followed by online spend at 30%. And surprisingly, greater TV ad spend is particularly prevalent among B2C brands, with 2016 marketing budgets revealing top consumer brands such as Macy’s, Home Depot, Netflix and Target allocate the largest percentages of spend to network and cable TV. And this allocation pays off- analysis by Ebiquity in 2014 showed that TV ads generate the most profit per £1 spent. And it’s clear these results still stand, with UK TV ad revenue in 2015 totalling £5.27 billion- a rise of 7.4% on 2014.

Interestingly too, a recent report revealed that Millennials spend more time interacting with TV than other forms, with TV programmes and ads then contributing to a large amount of online and social media conversation. The report also showed that 88% of Millennials still turned to viewing content via their TV screens themselves, in comparison to just 4% on smartphones or tablets. Perhaps it was this that encouraged Facebook to venture into TV advertising last year, with an injection of £10.8 million into this area.

This year though, YouTube has been trying to persuade brands rooted in their TV advertising strategies to turn to its platform instead for their video campaigns. After producing 56 case studies over the past three years from European businesses across the retail, tech, media and entertainment, classifieds and local, automotive and CPG sectors, the company found that in 80% of cases, brands could double their spend on YouTube and achieve better ROI from this. As mentioned before, TV ad spend from brands in the UK in 2015 was around the £5.3 billion mark- YouTube ad spend however, was just £711 million in comparison- so it’s clear why the platform wants to boost its position in this area.

Brand video campaigns however, often use YouTube to compliment TV offerings, rather than compete with them, so it’s unlikely that businesses will simply put all their eggs in one basket. For instance, some of the most successful video campaigns have incorporated both TV and YouTube at the core of their strategies. Colgate for example, employed a multi-channel approach to promote its new Optic Express White toothpaste with a campaign including YouTube and TrueView ads as well as TV initiatives, amongst in-store and print marketing. The clever feature of this plan saw the brand using YouTube beauty influencers in their TV ads too, increasing the reception from Millennials, and thereby integrating the digital and traditional. As a result, the campaign generated a 13% lift in brand awareness and a 10.8% lift in purchase consideration.

Are you more receptive to TV ads than other forms of advertising? Do you think digital ad spend will one day match that of TV? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.