If there’s one thing I’ve learned in four decades of covering the ad marketplace, it’s that the perceptions advertisers have about the value of reaching consumers often outweigh the reality of the returns on their media buys. The reality is that people are human, and humans have biases that shape how they perceive the value of things — especially media buys.
New academic research published by the JAR seeks to dispel similar myths about planning and buying television in order to reach increasingly valuable audiences: multicultural ones.
The research is bound to rub an old sore for TV planners and buyers: that they are biased against multicultural media and undervalue targeting minority audiences explicitly. Noting that advertisers historically pay lower ad rates for TV networks targeting multicultural audiences, partly because they perceive that minority viewers are easily and cost-effectively reached via general market networks, the researchers maintain that digital media — especially mobile — has exacerbated the fragmentation of multicultural viewers, because it makes it easier for them to access programming genres that appeal to them, or what the paper’s authors refer to as “uses and gratification theory.”
The research backs that thesis up and makes the case that it is more effective to target multicultural audiences via program genres than via television networks.
Professors J. P. James (Salem University) and Tyrha M. Lindsey-Warren (Baylor University) write, “A total market approach to media planning, whereby multicultural and general-market segments are viewed as one segment with cultural nuance addressed in the tactics, is appropriate to improve targeting, message rotation and scheduling, media buying, and return on investment metrics for the ethnic population.”
The thesis is legit and their research is sound, but where the authors fail is when they imply that the ad industry is economically biased against multicultural TV programmers. Yes, it is true that the ad industry has historically paid lower CPMs for minority-focused programmers — African-American networks like BET or Spanish-language programmers like Univision and Telemundo. But the real reason is not because of a multicultural bias or a flawed approach to media planning and audience targeting.
The real reason is simple marketplace dynamics that demand has not outstripped supply and the first goal of any ad budget is to buy the most effective media for the lowest possible cost. In other words, the “perception” is that Madison Avenue is biased against multicultural programmers, but the “reality” is they are just exercising the economic principles of supply and demand.
Source: Mandese, J. (2018, October 12). The Perception and Reality of Multicultural TV Ad Bias. MediaPost.
Editor’s Note: This article from Joe Mandese (in MediaPost) comments on a Journal of Advertising Research (JAR) paper.