Are you doing Digital Media in the Traditional Media Way?

We all, have seen digital grow in this world. Some of us (the grey-haired or no-hair ones) saw its initiation and the emergence of the whole ecosystem of industries growing around it.. like email, mobile phones and many more. While the younger-gen, though born into the digital world have seen it evolving too. In an India industry forum in the terminal part of the 20th Century - the advertising media spend on digital was estimated as INR 30 Crs - today, the estimate is around INR 30,000 Cr and moving up faster than any other media. But, this article is not about the growth of digital- it is about the way digital is used today in the area of brand communications.

We encounter digital in numerous avenues and manners for advertising - Search, Performance, Banner/ Display Ads and their varied manifestations in every platform, Video Ads, Native Ads, In-App Ads, Rich-Media Banners, EComm Search/ Display, Programmatic, Lock-Screen Ads, OTT In-Stream, Email Marketing, Social.. and many many more. And, there is a huge body of knowledge proliferated by each platform on what this type of advertising means and the best practices of advertising for each of these and more. But, this article is not about the different advertising options in digital media - it is about the way digital is used today in the area of brand communications.

Digital media in brand communication was supposed to bring in a change. There are many other changes but, these are the relevant ones to discuss here. 

- Addressability v/s No-Idea who is seeing the TV Ad

- 2-Way Communication/ Conversation v/s No-Idea what consumer feels/ says after seeing the TV Ad

- Direct Track-ability of Consumer Action v/s No-Idea what consumer does after seeing the TV Ad

- Link-ability of exposure on different media v/s No-Idea what other exposure the consumer gets after seeing the TV Ad 

- Conclusive Attribution v/s No-Idea what consumer buys after seeing the TV Ad

No wonder, the broadcast approach has been termed as the Spray & Pray approach and a huge amount of measurement & analytics was required to arrive at some attributed ROI of the traditional media investments.  

So, if we are not using any or some of the attributes of digital advertising - we would just be using digital media in the traditional way - just another screen to drive exposures without getting all the benefit of shifting to digital. And, if so then should that digital advertising approach not be called Traditional? Its not the media that is Traditional but, the manner of its usage is Traditional.

Lets look at where we are on each of the elements - and the POV below is about what is generally seen does and not talk of those who are doing better. And, this is not a judgement on anyone - but, a call to all to evaluate where each one is on the above parameters.

Addressability: Technically, the manner of deployment is addressable as the servers deliver the ads to a specified "machine ID" - now we know our ad was delivered; measure of viewability are helping understand views better; we are using data on delivery/ viewability to re-market; we know whether anyone clicked on the ad.  But, how much do we really know about who we are addressing. Some advertisers are just interested in reach (traditional model) and are not bothered about the addressability (its just a by-product) or viewabilty. While, there is a lot of talk of shoppable-advertising, with the sub-1% level of CTRs that we feel proud about - one must really question the approach.

- 2-Way Communication/ Conversation: Yes, Digital has given a voice to the consumer. Publishing is no longer the privilege of only a few (this blog is a testament to that). Social media has become the greatest connector and influencer. Social posts and chat-bots and a lot is being created for consumer conversations. But, how much of the ad-money do we really spend on 'conversations' while brand-speak is still the norm.

- Direct Track-ability of Consumer Action: Like we discussed above, the CTRs for any communication are typically sub-1% and the actions if any, thereafter for this small group are also usually un-trackable. Of Course! GDPR is there but the idea is to understand the consumer response - and again other than complicated analytics there is no way to understand what, the consumer does. 

- Link-ability of exposure on different media: Walled-Gardens, supposedly driven by concerns of privacy are keeping all (recordable) info to themselves and the advertisers have rarely sufficient insight into how the dots connect across media or platforms. The best understanding is at the level of aggregates which has been the traditional way. Technically, lot can be done and at a platform level, each platform is creating capabilities to allow a better understanding but, connecting the dots is still quite an adventure. First-Party Data at advertisers end has started but, still far from adequate and even that does not solve for the issues opacity of the walled-gardens.   

- Conclusive Attribution: Sales Attribution is the holy grail and this is where it is still very muddy. There are constant debates on what did digital achieve. Decade of last-mile attribution has worked well for the digital platforms as mass-ignorance and nudges from platforms moved monies to digital. Digital spends at times have been vanity-spends. I am not at all taking away from the advantage that digital brings to the party but, we need to be congnizant of what "business" did it really drive. We still dont know. 

While, digital is evolving everyday and so, is the science on how to use digital - but, there is still a lot to be done here. While, Short-term and platform-level measures that digital provides are good to have/ critical to manage deployment but, we need to understand their relationships to brand-measures with more clarity and conclusivity. Just being on digital is not enough, as you can see from the discussion above, there is a lot of investment required beyond placing the ads to enable the advantages of digital. There is a change required in what we expect from digital - whether, we are are looking for the listed digital benefits or are we happy with just the traditional deliverable of exposure. 

Digital media is extremely powerful. We need to use digital for the ability to provide many of the above advantages - else we can always use the digital screen as another "TV screen" and keep doing Spray & Pray. We would be using Digital Media in the Traditional Media Way.

The Future: Inevitably Digital

I remember the days when I was a young entrant into the world of media (actually, media research to be specific) as I joined MRUC (Media Research Users Council). Somewhere around that time internet was included as a medium to be measured, into the Indian Readership Survey.

Internet used to be measured at two levels - aware about internet and frequency of usage of internet. While, usage of internet appeared to be a mere blip, there was a fair amount of awareness.

Actually, a funny incident had the researchers very perplexed. In a few small markets, the internet awareness showed levels 3 - 4 times those in any other market. Thanks to the robust back-check system followed by the IRS  - it was soon discovered that the high level of awareness was not of the interNET but of MosquitoNET - a simple mix-up about the NET.

India has certainly come along way since then. Its been about little over a decade since then.

We have all seen the rise in adoption of the internet which started getting adopted as a business application for emails, then soon evolved. Surfing to Search to Webmail to Games to Creating Websites to Blogs to Shopping to Banking to Ticketing to Networking to Socializing..... It now touches almost every part of our lives. In fact, now it is not confined to the computer screen but stays with us through our mobiles all day long.

However, the sceptics are still very adamant that in India internet is still a niche phenomenon and it will not affect the mass of India for many more years to come.  

Yes, the penetration levels of internet are not as high compared to those of television or newspapers today but with the rate at which the penetration of mobiles is increasing, it is just a matter of time..  a matter of very little time that it will surpass the reach of every other media. Just as we 24x7 access to electricity, so we shall have for internet. As products, services and governance starts utilizing the internet its advent as a mass application is inevitable.  

The sooner we believe this future and evolve our structure, methods and practices to address this fundamental change - the easier our future success shall be.

"If you dont give Digital a chance today; Digital wont give you a chance in the future"