Nielsen Total Audience Report For Q1 2015 Confirms It: Traditional Media Is Far From Dead
Nielsen recently released its Total Audience Report for Q1 2015, and low and behold the report reinforces what we here at Fruchtman Marketing have been telling our clients for a while now – traditional media is far from kicking the bucket. In fact, TV and radio are still extremely strong. We know digital media is all the rage right now – and sure, it makes sense to put an appropriate amount of your media budget into digital. The key word though is appropriate. You absolutely need to keep TV and radio on the table for the foreseeable future.
Let’s look first at TV. More than 87% of respondents age 18+ said they watch TV in a given week. The average adult, in fact, watches TV more than 36 hours each week according to Nielsen. About 10% of that TV viewing is time-shifted viewing, with the other 90% being live viewing. (All of those people telling you that you need to drastically change your TV buying strategy due to time-shifting viewing? Based on this report, not so much.) Drilling down deeper into the numbers to look at the coveted bridal demo (adults 25-34), we find that those folks watch about 24 ½ hours of traditional TV each week and 3 ½ hours of time-shifted. TV far and away accounts for the biggest piece of the age 25-34 media pie. The next closest is radio, but it’s about half as much.
Speaking of radio, while not as large as TV, it too is still going strongly thus far in 2015. Next to TV, radio is where adults are spending the most time in consuming media. More than 92% of respondents age 18+ said they listen to AM/FM radio in a given week. Also, more than 18% said they listen to streaming audio via smartphone, about 8% said they listen to streaming audio via PC, and 3.5% said they listen to streaming audio via tablet. Bottom line – people are still listening to the radio in a big way. Of course, it may be time to think about altering your radio buying strategy (if you haven’t already) to include such online streaming services as Pandora and iHeartRadio as a portion of your radio buy. But terrestrial and online radio needs to be a consideration if not a solid part of your marketing plan.
There’s much more to the report, enough to make a media freak like me salivate, but the main takeaway is this: You’re really shooting yourself in the foot if you walk away from traditional media as a large part of your overall marketing plan for 2015 and 2016.
Want to know more about the Nielsen Total Audience Report or current media trends in general? Contact us at suits@fruchtman.com and our media geeks would love to chat about how we can take your media plan to the next level.
