The Ad Contrarian is on vacation until Sept. 3

TV Dying? More Alive Than Ever.

Nobody is smarter than the facts.

Contrary to all the baloney you read and all the nonsense promulgated by media and marketing "experts," and digital maniacs, TV viewing continues to grow and continues to swamp online activity.

Here are some facts from Nielsen's Cross-Platform Report for the 1st quarter of 2013:

• The average American spent about six times more time watching live TV than on the web.

• 97% of all video was viewed on a television. Less than 3% was viewed online.

• About 1/2 of 1% of video viewing was done on a mobile phone.

• Average live TV viewing increased by more than 1.5 hours a month compared to last year.

• 92% of TV viewing was done live. 8% was time-shifted (DVR.)

• TV viewing remains at record high levels.

Memo to agency media directors: When is the last time you told your clients the truth?

The "Youth Car" Delusion

This post is adapted from a piece on the Type A Group website.

According to The Wall Street Journal, it's not young people who are buying "youth cars," it's older people.

"Appealing to the young has auto makers designing and marketing to the "millennial generation"—that group of consumers in their 20s and 30s... But senior citizens are making Swiss cheese of those efforts."

The auto industry continues to target 18-34 year olds who account for only 12% of subcompact car sales. Meanwhile they essentially ignore the 88% of the population who actually buy these "youth" cars.

Of course the dimwits responsible for this ineptitude have to justify their stupidity...

"The baby boomer generation is the largest cohort in the marketplace," (said one executive) "Just by virtue of their numbers being so large, we'll continue to see them skew the data for a long time."

So, you see, older people aren't really customers. They don't really buy things. They don't spend real money. All they do is "skew the data."

And we love this one. The president of a market research firm had this to say:

"So when marketing messages are for millennials, there are a lot of things that are attractive to the older generation."

What utter nonsense. Older people are buying these cars in spite of the horrible, mis-targeted advertising, not because of it.

There is no other group in the pantheon of marketing that anyone would claim is best influenced by targeting someone else. The whole science of marketing is based on finding the most relevant message and delivering it to the most probable buyer. Except when it comes to people over 50. Then all the rules are suspended. Because these people don't count. They're just "data skewers."

So instead, you deliver the wrong message to the wrong people and this is called "advertising strategy." And pathetic "market researchers" endorse this idiocy.

The advertising and marketing industry are absolutely, totally, hopelessly clueless.