Madison Avenue, directly or indirectly, allocates nearly a trillion
dollars in advertising budgets to influence consumers via media, but how
much does the personal media habits and interests of industry pros
influence the media they use to do that? It’s an old question that it
taking on new impetus in the age of hyper accelerated digital media
change, and some new research indicates that the personal media habits
of industry pros isn’t anything like that of the consumers they are
charged with influencing.
The research, which was presented by the Media Behavior Institute last Thursday night during MPG’s Collaborative Alliance session during Advertising Week, indicates that media pros are much more likely to be
heavy users of digital media – particularly mobile and social – and are
much less likely to use traditional media such as TV and radio than
average consumers.
The study, which utilized a mobile app-based diary that a small,
non-projectable sample of industry executives used to self-report their
media usage during one day in their working life, compared their
behavior with MBI’s ongoing USA TouchPoints study, which captures the
same daily usage data among the general consumer population for 10-day
periods.
(chart from Inside Radio)
While the data is based on a small sample, the findings are striking,
because the media pros reporting were so dramatically different than
average consumers, especially when it came to their use of
Internet-connected computers and mobile devices.
Just ask anyone in your sales department. This info will come as nothing new.
I'd add more, but I can't top
the comments at the bottom of the Mediapost article:
- Don Seaman from TVB: "It also would explain the industry's obsession with "Mad Men"..."
- Doug Garnett from Atomic Direct
: "For all the talk of informed
strategy, far too many ad agency decisions are based on personal
preference and neighborly anecdote. This is good data for provoking
thought. It also explains the ad biz obsession with digital - resulting
in spending that far outpaces it's effectiveness."
- Domenico Tassone from The Encima Group, Inc.
"It's called the echo chamber."