Commercial radio industry body, Radiocentre, commissioned Ebiquity to research the relative value of media. The resulting report, Re-evaluating Media, found that traditional media performs significantly better than they are perceived to for brand building campaigns.

It found that TV and radio are by far the strongest advertising media for brand-building followed by newspapers, magazines and out-of-home – despite industry decision-makers believing that online video and social media are the second and third most effective media after TV.

Ebiquity’s research involved interviewing 116 senior executives working for brands and agencies as well as analysing 75 research reports and their proprietary data sets for evidence about the performance of different media. It created scoring criteria to rate media performance against set attributes for brand building campaigns.

This allowed perceptions about media to be compared against the evidence. They found a significant mismatch between industry perceptions and what the evidence says.

Morag Blazey, Ebiquity managing principal, said: “Alarm bells have been ringing for some time. Our analytics research is repeatedly showing that advertisers are not getting the best possible return on their media investment.

“So, the time felt right when the Radiocentre came to us for an independent, impartial and robust re-evaluation of the value of media for brand building. The findings reveal that it is time for the industry to re-balance their use of media to optimise advertising budgets.” 

The research found that targeting was considered the single most important media attribute for a brand building campaign and that radio is the top medium for targeting the right people in the right place at the right time.

TV and radio are the top media for return on investment (ROI) although advertisers and media agencies heavily overestimated the value of online video and social media for ROI. Interviewees also put online video and display top for transparent third-party audience measurement, however Ebiquity’s research found that traditional media comes out top and online video is bottom.