A comparison of media cost effectiveness - The Monday Morning Memo

This chart is essentially a comparison of cost effectiveness.
(CPM is ad-speak for “Cost Per Thousand.”)

The same impact that costs $9.70 per 1,000 people when using a display ad can be purchased for just 40 cents when using radio. That identical impact costs 7 times as much when using television, and between 6 and 12.5 times as much when using social media.

Yet when advertisers discuss which media they feel they should use, there is always this weird, underlying assumption that all the different media are priced about the same.

Peter Field (bottom right corner of the chart) is a world famous data scientist who is paid by the largest advertising agencies on earth to answer all the “cause and effect” questions in the world of advertising.

If you want to understand advertising effectiveness, Google Les Binet and Peter Field.

Don’t let anyone convince you that “No one listens to the radio any more.” Broadcast radio and broadcast television (ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX) remain the most reliable and cost effective way to turn small companies into big companies.

“Where is Danny? Lonely as smoke on a clear, cold night, he drifts through Monterey in the evening. To the post-office he goes, to the station, to the pool rooms on Alvarado Street, to the wharf where the black water mourns among the piles. What is it, Danny? What makes you feel this way? Danny didn’t know. There was an ache in his heart like the farewell to a dear woman; there was vague sorrow in him like the despair of autumn. He walked past the restaurants he used to smell with interest, and no appetite was aroused in him. He walked by Madam Zuca’s great establishment, and exchanged no obscene jests with the girls in the windows. Back to the wharf he went. He looked over the rail into the deep, deep water. Do you know, Danny, how the wine of your life is pouring into the fruit jars of the gods? Do you see the procession of your days in the oily waters among the piles? He remained motionless, staring down.”

- From Chapter XVI of Tortilla Flat, by John Steinbeck (1935)