TV advertising isn’t dead....

Every few years, someone, usually on LinkedIn, (over)confidently declares that TV advertising is finally finished.

It’s always the same argument. Audiences are fragmenting. Attention spans are collapsing. Digital is more targeted. More measurable. More everything.

But TV is still here. Still working. Still doing the one thing most modern marketing struggles to do: Make people feel something at scale.

TV isn’t dead. It’s just not easy to do. But then, good things never are.
It demands commitment. Proper budgets. A point of view.
An idea big enough to carry 30 seconds without hiding behind a targeting strategy. That’s uncomfortable for an industry that’s spent the last decade optimising itself into mediocrity.

Digital has trained us to think small

Small formats. Small messages. Small expectations.
We test. We tweak. We iterate. We personalise.
We chase efficiency like it’s the same thing as effectiveness.
And somewhere along the way, we stopped asking a much more important question: Is this actually memorable?
TV forces that question.

You can’t hide in a TV ad. You can’t rely on someone already being interested.
You can’t assume a click will bail you out.

You have to earn attention. Hold it.
And leave something behind.
That’s not a media challenge. That’s a creative one.

Swing for greatness.

The irony is, TV has become more powerful precisely because everyone thinks it isn’t. Less clutter. Fewer brands willing to invest properly. More space for the ones that do to dominate. When a great campaign lands, it doesn’t just get seen. It still gets talked about. In threads. In posts. Shared. Remembered. It bleeds into culture.
Try doing that with a carousel ad.

But here’s the catch. Most TV advertising is forgettable. Not because the channel is broken, but because the thinking is.

We’ve started treating TV like just another output. Another asset to produce. Another box to tick in the media plan. So we get safe ideas. Over-explained messages. Work that feels like it’s been optimised by committee before it’s even been made.

And then we blame the medium.

A great TV ad is still one of the most powerful creative acts a brand can make. It’s where strategy, storytelling, and craft collide. Where a brand stops behaving like a collection of messages and starts acting like something people might actually care about.

It’s not about reach. It’s about impact. Done well, it builds memory. Fame. Meaning. All the things performance marketing quietly depends on but can’t create on its own.

So no, TV isn’t dead. We’ve just lowered our standards.
And until we raise them again, we’ll keep mistaking underwhelming work for a failing channel.

If you want TV to work, the answer isn’t to abandon it. It’s to make something worth watching.

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