by Scott Howard | Aug 11, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Today a word of warning if you are buying television advertising. Especially ads on your local TV station.
I’ll start with the bottom line: Ask for Specific Audience Numbers that tell you how many people will see your commercials. And Beware of Fudgers.
Last month, I was meeting with a law firm and the attorney tells me he only advertises on TV. End of meeting. His call not mine. There were specific questions I wanted to ask him, but he got up and our meeting was over.
While I wish I could have continued the conversation, I don’t care because I am meeting with a couple of his competitors this month.
Last month I also received a new report that is the basis of this article.
The major points are:
- Viewing has actually increased.
- The reason for that increase is technology.
- That same technology means your ads that you place with your local TV station are being seen by less people than ever before…maybe, but probably.
This report says, “digital streaming now represents an estimated one-quarter of time spent watching TV, closing the gap with live TV, which occupies a leading 39% of all time spent using TV content.” 
So the trend for viewing TV is via digital streaming which is now 25% of all television viewing. There’s another number, live TV is only 39% of the time spent watching TV content?! Alarming, but what about the rest? The article continues, “Streaming is on par with time-shifting via DVR, which also captures an estimated one-quarter of viewing time.”
That leaves 11% unaccounted for in this report. Unfortunately reports like this pull numbers out of the research to make their point and are incomplete.
But here’s a couple of take-aways:
Technology has enabled the viewing audience to watch what they want, when they want and where they want. No longer is anyone glued to the TV to watch a show because that is when the show is on.
DVR’s, the technology that allowed us to Fast Forward through the commercials was one challenge local advertisers had and still have. When Bobs Burger Barn commercials come on, we can hit the FF button and skip them. But with these alternative methods of watching our favorite shows with streaming, there is no Bobs Burger Barn ads to skip.
Like I said at the beginning, when you, Mr/Ms Local Business Person are buying ads from your local tv station, ask for numbers on local live viewership during the time slots your ads will air. They probably have plenty, but beware of those who give overblown estimates.
And now you know what kind of questions to ask to determine what you are really buying.
by Scott Howard | Jul 14, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
I saw another statistic last week that makes me glad I don’t work in the television business. The article from AdAge.com starts with the headline, “Televisions Are No Longer the Screen of Choice for Kids”.
Who are the kids they are referring to? Well, it appears that they are toddlers, which are age 1 to 5 or so. I have 8 grandkids and 6 of them are in this age range. 
Instead of watching on the tv in the living room, family room, or where ever room, what are they watching and where?
Looks like tablets are winning big. The web is winning big, and who is losing? Traditional TV Broadcast Networks. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS.
30 years ago I saw the rise of cable TV which was the beginning of conditioning us to pay for extra tv channels even though we could watch 3 or 4 channels with the most popular programs free.
Look at the shows that have been getting the Emmy nominations and awards the past several years and you’ll see what I have witnessed as more and more of the shows are only available via cable or internet.
A former coworker of mine from the radio advertising world now works in tv advertising. His job is to get results for people who give him money for advertising on his tv station, just like mine is to get results for people who give me money for advertising on my radio station.
But the odds of success are drastically stacked against him. The last time I watched any program on his TV station was a sporting event. Last winter.
Of the traditional broadcast TV networks, I watch CBS the most, followed by ABC, NBC, PBS and FOX. But when you add up the actual hours each week, there are some cable channels that get more viewing time than any of those broadcast networks.
You’ve already lost me as a potential customer if you are only using my local broadcast tv channels because, I don’t watch with enough frequency to have an impact. The 10 or so cable networks I tune into at least once a week are not being used by local businesses to reach me either.
Hang on a second, I started talking about toddlers, 5 year olds, the kids of my kids, and now I’m talking about my baby boomer TV viewing habits…
The point is, the broadcast television networks with their local stations have already lost the baby boom generation which is currently age 51 to 69. We are the ones who watched TV before cable. My kids, the millennials are the ones who are switching from cable tv to web tv services like Netflix and Hulu. Their kids, the ones the study talks about, we honestly have no idea how they’ll be watching what we call TV when they become adults in 15 years.
But the death of local TV advertising has already begun…
by Scott Howard | Jun 23, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
A couple weekends ago my wife asked me to vacuum a couple of rooms, which is normally no big deal. But things got a little complicated when I tried to plug the vacuum in to the first “outlet”.
It was next to a chair in a spare bedroom and even though I couldn’t see it directly, I could reach around and plug in the vacuum, was my thought.
Take a look:
My first view of the outlet
Now when I first attempted to plug in the vacuum, my view was non-existent.
I just knew that there was something there that would probably work.
I’m going to stop a second and apply this to business marketing.
And because I work for WOWO radio, I’ll use radio in this application.
I recall a business owner telling me a few years ago that he tried radio and it didn’t work.
I smiled when I asked him if it was the batteries or the cord. He smiled back and said his radio worked fine, but when he tried advertising on the radio, on his favorite radio station, he got nothing back.
We talked further and discovered that his favorite station was targeted to teens and 20 year olds, even though he was 40, he was not their typical listener. His ideal customer was someone age 45+.
As you can imagine, the radio station he advertised on was not a good fit for his business.
Sort of like this mystery outlet in my spare bedroom. I moved the chair to see what was going on and saw this:
See those two letters?
See those letters, T.V. ? Apparently this house we bought last year that was built 40 years ago has wiring behind the walls for a rooftop TV antenna. And sure enough, there is a rooftop TV antenna on top of my house which we don’t use.
Even if I figured out a way to modify the plug on the vacuum or modify the outlet and was able to connect the two, it would not work. And I was smart enough not to try.
Some people will try and force something to work marketing wise that is simply a lost cause. You can’t run more and more ads to the wrong people to get them to buy your stuff. Instead, find a better place to run your ads so your target market will hear and respond.
I did just that with the vacuum. I plugged it into an appropriate electrical outlet and everything worked the way it was supposed to.
Apply this to your business marketing and you’ll discover by looking a little closer what can work to help spread the word about your business.
(Or you can just throw away the vacuum.)
by Scott Howard | Jan 29, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, ScLoHo's Web World
At the end of 2014, I, like many of you, took stock of my year and decided to make some changes for 2015.
Some of those changes involved my online activity including this website. I am continuing to prune my Twitter connections and expand both LinkedIn and Facebook contacts.
For this website, I did a layout redesign and also created a new version of my “editorial calender”.
(An editorial calender is a fancy term for planning ahead what you are going to publish and having some sort of pattern or routine to it.)
My editorial calender is not laid out on a fancy spread sheet or on the back of a napkin. It’s in my head.
That works because, this website is my own creation. I launched it in 2011 and previously had several ScLoHo blogs that were also my own creation.
As I mentioned the other day, I am now in my second full year at WOWO and Federated Media and that is where I make a living. This website is my own marketing machine, but it’s actually more of a creative outlet than anything else.
It’s not a direct money maker, but it is a promotional tool.
See my goal in life professionally is to help others make smart decisions with their marketing and advertising dollars. Sometimes I can help them directly, other times, I’m simply pointing them in a direction.
Tomorrow, I’m going to do a review of the month with links to articles that you may have missed.
And here’s what I am planning on doing next month:
I am going to be transparent about the price of advertising with me and WOWO radio, more than anyone probably ever has, at least publicly.
You will see how we set our prices and why. You will see some of the options and we’ll talk about the value of each and also the why.
The articles I am going to write would have cost me my job a few years ago when I worked for another group of radio stations in Fort Wayne. They were very paranoid and secretive. During the time I worked there, they asked me to stop sharing all of this advertising and marketing information online.
But I don’t work for them anymore and I am free to do what helps me help you.
Let’s not make this a monologue either. Let’s continue to make this a dialogue. You can reach out to me with a comment, or contact me directly with the connections listed below.
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
TuneIn
Deezer
CastBox