Beyond the dinosaurs being the big spenders on TV, there's no way digital advertising as we know it today will replace TV advertising. Creatively, you really can't even compare the two. A TV spot is the opportunity to make someone laugh or make someone feel something – anything. A banner ad or a spot with a "skip now" button is not going to do that. You really can't tell a story (as cliche as that sounds, its true). Digital advertising has less creative opportunity for the people making it and basically no reason for anyone seeing it to care.
This is why Snapchat and Facebook starting to really figure out video is so huge in adland. As attentions shift there and it starts to house real content, advertisers will have an actual digital channel to create content people might actually care about.
I would posit that Snapchat and Facebook are working so hard on videos because video ads have a much higher payout in the current ecosystem. I don't know that it's necessarily because of efficacy.
The higher CPMs are because it is a "new" format that has less ways of avoiding it (ie. prerolls) compared to banner ads.
Effectiveness is totally dependent on a variety of variables, and as someone very well versed in these things, I can confidently state that most advertisers have no clue about things like "cross channel attribution," how to go about finding a proper value for view-through conversions (hint: it sure as heck isn't 100%), viewability, etc.
For example, right now FB counts a view as a video that plays for three seconds[1] (could have sworn it used to be 2). A lot of advertisers, myself included, would laugh at that in terms of properly conveying the value of most messages (Geico ads aside--they really know their medium).
Combine that with Facebook also counting view-throughs as conversions with 100% credit (albeit with a short lookback window) by default, and you have the recipe for overvalued CPMs on video. And that's just on FB--other sources can be much worse.
Part of me wishes Ben had guests on Exponent. I listen to every episode, and would LOVE to dig into this stuff with him from an advertising perspective as he actually has a somewhat solid sense about it. But what I've been disappointed in is his inability/refusal to dig deep into these key points.
Performance for video and display overall is super hard to measure effectively given the nature of the beast. Just because there's lots of data available doesn't mean it is the right/best data, and he should point that out more. Attribution is a hairy beast, and ad sales people take full advantage of people's lack of knowledge on this.
> there's no way digital advertising as we know it today will replace TV advertising
As people adopt DVRs and quality show producers move on to online platforms like Netflix and Amazon (as they entice them with full creative control and no ad interruptions), won't the only thing remaning that resembles TV advertising be during live broadcasts (sports, maybe news)
This is why Snapchat and Facebook starting to really figure out video is so huge in adland. As attentions shift there and it starts to house real content, advertisers will have an actual digital channel to create content people might actually care about.