Latest research from the UK found there was a significant gap between what advertisers and media buyers perceived to be the best performing media compared to the evidence.
The research paper, published last month by Britain’s Radiocentre in partnership with Ebiquity, is titled Re-Evaluating Media for Recovery – Understanding the true value of media for growing brands during challenging times.
A primary part of the research involved asking respondents to rank 10 different media against each of 12 attributes, such as ROI, Brand Salience and Targeting using five options from ‘very good’ to ‘very poor’.
The overall results, in the table below, show that all traditional media are undervalued by advertisers and agencies relative to the evidence. In particular, print media fall towards the bottom of the ranking in terms of perceptions while objective research places them third and fourth.
Conversely, newer media types such as online video, social media, and online display – which continue to lack publicly-available data to support their case – benefit from better perceptions to rise above their respective evidence rankings.
The study also asked participants to share their predictions for how 2021 budgets will change for individual media compared to their original pre-COVID 2020 budgets. This reveals further the extent to which media spending is led by perception, with digital media occupying the top three slots in terms of planned increase in expenditure.
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