According to the study, ‘AdNation 2017’, the echo chamber in the media, marketing and advertising industry is causing industry professionals to underestimate the power of television among everyday Australians.

Think TV has released the results of a study it has conducted into the views of people who work in the advertising and media industry versus that of people who don’t. The study, ‘AdNation 2017’, surveyed over 1600 professionals in the advertising and media industry as well as over 1000 ordinary people. Leading marketing academic Professor Karen Nelson-Field conducted the survey to point out the differences and similarities in the two groups’ lifestyles and their usage of – and attitudes towards – different media.

One of the key findings from the study was that Australians consider TV advertising to be the most liked, trusted, and memorable form of advertising and the one that draws the most attention to brands people have not heard of.

But advertising, marketing and media professionals are out of touch with most of the media habits and attitudes of average Australians, who are considerably less likely than “AdLand” to use social media and SVOD.

The study also says that many industry professionals are uninformed about the media consumption habits and attitudes of regular Australians.

It reveals that industry professionals over-estimate what percentage of average Australians have used social media and subscription video-on-demand in the previous seven days, in some cases by a huge margin.

This is perhaps not surprising given that AdLanders were found to have radically different lifestyles and media consumption habits to those of normal people, including a much larger online footprint than the rest of Australia, particularly when it comes to social media.

The study also included some lifestyle findings such as people in AdLand are less likely to have children, nearly three times more likely to have a gym membership, more than twice as likely to be single and live in a share house as well as more likely to prefer lamb as their favourite barbeque meat.

“We all know that in the world of marketing, media and advertising we live in a bit of a bubble. ‘AdNation 2017 ‘pops this bubble and allows us to have a good laugh at ourselves,” says Kim Portrate, chief executive of ThinkTV.

“But it also makes a serious point. Knowing what people like, feel and do is critical to our success when it comes to growing brands. But we also know that our own preferences can lead to projection bias, which ultimately impacts on the spending decisions we make about media,” adds Portrate.

Other key findings include:

• Adland thinks normal people spend almost a quarter of their online time on social media, when the figure is actually 16 per cent. Normal Australians spend almost as much of their online time emailing or working.
• Almost twice as many normal people (42%) said they were likely to find advertising they liked on TV compared to AdLand (22%). In contrast people in AdLand preferred social media as a place to find ads they liked (36%), 16 percentage points more than normal people (20%).

“AdNation 2017’s findings represent a big opportunity for marketers and advertisers to reassess how in touch we are with the reality of everyday Australians. We need to keep their actual media consumption habits front of mind rather than simply using ourselves or our friends as a sample of one or a few,” says Portrate.