My interest in broadcast advertising effectiveness was piqued recently by this scan of a McKinsey & Co. study in Advertising Age. The "grabber" in the article is that:
"...by 2010, traditional TV advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990."

Hmmm... thought I. The numbers cited seem to indicate that this has happened. I went to the source in the McKinsey Quarterly Report to verify my thesis. What I have surmised is that the study assumes what has already happened to prime-time advertising will take hold in TV as a whole.

Just look at the numbers. A 40% price hike has bought 50% less viewers in prime-time since 1990. That represents about a 65% decrease in effectiveness, or as the study words it, "35% as effective as it was in 1990"; which sure sounds a little friendlier doesn't it?

One of the curious by-products of this market's collapse are the efforts by some advertising agencies to "shock" their represented products to greater effectiveness. This has lead to the spectacle of gambling on highly questionable imagery to gain market share. The old saw may say that there "is no such thing as bad publicity" but that just is not true.

Another tactic is to carpet bomb a property with logos and "messages". There may be some significance in the psychology of this but I question how useful saturation ads are in the long run. Do "exclusive to" products really get a bump outside of the controlled environment of their "exclusive" property?

The McKinsey Study has quantified what we really already knew: the age of TV dominance is over. Advertising and sales has already adjusted to the new channels available to it -- and they are not on television. Somebody send a Telex to the TV business.