One of the big quandaries facing marketers these days is what to do with all those ad dollars (and there are plenty of ad dollars). But with the growth of the Internet, should less be spent on TV ads? A recent piece in Ad Age speculated that Johnson & Johnson, for instance, is shifting more media buys to web sites, search engines and the like.

Yet a recent story in Fortune magazine cites Nielsen Media Research showing TV viewing is the highest since tracking began 50 years ago. The average U.S. household watched eight hours and 14 minutes of television a day last season, and the average individual American watched four hours and 35 minutes a day. This doesn’t include time spent in front of computers.

This suggests there’s still a place for those tried-and-true, instantaneous, mass impact ad buys. So as Bob Ehrlich, a former Warner-Lambert exec who runs DTC Perspectives consulting counsels in his latest e-mail note to industry folk, the biggest threat to TV advertising aren’t viewing habits, but Congress.

The threats to require mandated copy on risk and side effects, he posits, would make TV ads hard to execute in 60 seconds. If ads need to be 90 or 120 seconds, he asks, would advertisers pay the media cost and have 75 percent of copy points contain warnings and side effects? The real question to ask is not ‘would,’ but ’should’ they pay.

The answer is ‘yes.’ Ehrlich is right that, as a practical matter, media departments need to think now about alternatives, such as more disease-education ads instead of branded spots. But TV ads won’t disappear. By including as much safety info as possible, the industry may earn some badly needed trust. Candor can go a lot further than self-serving spin.

TV story in Fortune;
J&J story in Advertising Age (registration required).[tags]advertising, DTC[/tags]