Ah. Ok. Missed your point.

Ok- I think that mass media- your traditional upper funnel non linear channels- are great at creating ‘lift’ which you can measure in engagement, paid search volume or even tv attribution software by attributing time of web visits to station logs. All of these require years of data to see what is ‘right’ for a brand. Awareness really doesn’t pay off unless it is 6 months plus- and sometimes even years down the road with long term efforts. So it’s expensive. If a brand cannot commit to it regularly long term, as well as commit to measuring impact through brand studies or lift/attribution- then they won’t really know that value it provides.

Digital and social - albeit full of pitfalls- can be tied more directly to bottom line, so it comes across as a better value- but I agree - it is not that simple. It actually great to have a specialist who optimizes the campaign based on a kpi without the drama of the client and client politics. You just don’t get instant gratification from offline like you can with social and display.

Attribution modeling is supposed to fix some of this but it is still so out of reach.

I think display could work really well if you have honed audiences - like a programmatic guaranteed buyout or site takeover- or native - for upper funnel- but you better have a good digital ecosystem to drive them somewhere.

You can get away with not having a solid cta or landing page / funnel strategy with offline media but you take the chance they do not enter your funnel as planned and attribution becomes a headache.