From Television to Digital: Why Ads Are Progressively Shifting Online

Storytelling is the essence of advertising. Getting your story or message out in the open that resonates with relevant consumers is what all advertisements strive towards. Of course, the more relatable and appealing it is, the more the engagement and visibility of your brand among audiences. But the same message can have different results based on the media you choose to showcase it on.

Namely the means of digital and television advertising.

While they both are popular tools of advertising, they are actually welcomed by audiences in very different ways. For starters, television ads are completely viewed as intrusive and as a matter of fact, they play the role of a ‘break’ during a film or soap.

Digital ads can be smartly positioned to utilize moments of high engagement. For instance, pre-rolls play at the beginning of a video and even though limited in time, it successfully catches the attention of an active audience. All this without seeming intrusive to viewers.

Whether skippable or non-skippable or whether in the shape of a banner or rectangle, there are countless and quirky ways of reaching out to your audience when you choose digital means. Images, video, multiple images and slides – this combination is a force to reckon with.

Powerful enough to even stop you from approaching television advertising agencies.

Digital and Television Advertising: What Set Them Apart From Each Other?

• 404,444 hours of Netflix video streamed
• 319 new Twitter users gained
• 500 hours of YouTube videos uploaded
• 347,222 Instagram stories
• 41.7m WhatsApp messages shared
• 28 new tracks added to Spotify’s library

All this is just a minute on the internet in 2020. 

With a tremendous growth from 302.36 million users in 2015 to about 696.77 million users in 2020, India is ranked as the second-largest online marketplace worldwide. Imagine using these numbers to your advantage for promoting your products and services! 

In fact, did you know that Google and Facebook account for a considerable share of global ad revenue?

Whether we accept it or not, all roads lead to digital as audiences get more and more engrossed and linked to online platforms. As the benefits of advertising online outweighing those of TV advertising, brands have begun shifting their focus and marketing spends towards the digital realm.

However, the strength of television advertising cannot be undermined. The combined sound and image along with the credibility it possesses makes it a worthy tool of advertising.

But there happens to be one small hiccup. 

TV advertising is akin to a fisherman casting his net into the sea of television in the hopes of catching relevant viewers. This wide net may not actually reach the true audience and on the contrary, it could also be shown to the non-target audience as well. Not even the best television advertising agencies can do away with this. 

This is where digital ads have risen to garner more preference due to their greater flexibility in terms of how spending is allocated. There are concrete filters and layers of targeting as well as accountability of exactly where the leads were generated from.

In fact, brand messages and ads can be fine-tuned based on this data which creates more scope for customization while translating into more freedom for advertisers.

Points of Distinction Between the Two Mediums of Advertising

Targeting options
Digital ads come with advanced means of reaching specific audiences while TV ads only have a select time band and particular serials for reaching them.

Follow up actions
Purchasing intent can be taken forward instantly with digital ads while television advertising loses out on moment marketing due to a change of mediums.

Measurement
Digital ads are highly efficient in terms of measuring impacts with hard data as opposed to the limited capability of TV ads to identify their true impacts.

Level of customization
While digital ads can be tailored to target (or exclude) specific audiences to drive unique reach, TV ads have no specified layers of reaching audiences.

And of course, don’t forget that television advertising rates also tend to be higher.

Even as digital shines in contrast, it is truly wrong to negate the reach and influence of TV ads, especially during the big events like IPL where they become more impactful than ever. But all things considered, going digital seems to be the way forward owing to the limitless possibilities it creates for advertisers.

Digital media and its variety of facets like online advertising, search engines, content marketing, social media, video streaming services and websites have created effective ways of reaching the right people and delivering your message with more effectiveness and results.

A changing audience, new trends of consuming information and greater access to the internet.

All these contribute to the magic behind digital ads today.