Study: It's More Effective to Advertise Online Than On TV

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me:

Every £1 spent on print advertisements yields £5 in revenue, compared with £2.15 for television and £3.44 for online advertising, a study of 26 leading UK retailers found.

In other words, the advertising hierarchy goes like this: Print >Online>TV. I hope this is true! After all, online advertising pays my rent. But I can't imagine it is.

I just conducted a quick non-scientific study of some bloggers behind me. "What's your favorite online ad?" I asked. They wrinkled their foreheads, gazed off into space, and looked somewhat lost for a few seconds. "Exactly," I said. "I can name my favorite TV ads," one said apologetically. "Exactly," I said again.

The study was conducted my Microsoft advertising, which "recommended retailers increased online and print advertising budgets by 10 per cent and decreased television budgets by that amount." Since Microsoft's online products like Bing would profit from an uptick in online advertising, this sounds like a classic example of consider the source. The Times dutifully points out that this study differs from larger professional surveys.

I don't have access to the findings, but it seems to me that a little bit of intuition goes a long way. Television advertisements take up the whole screen. They play. They have volume and live-motion and stories and punch-lines. Even if online advertisements are more "targeted," most web ads capture our attention the way the frame around an oil painting stands out to the viewer. TV ads interrupt with stories. Online ads just hang around the perimeter.