TV’s Not Dead, You’re Just Measuring It Wrong

A Marketer’s Guide with Alina Jasper

Author

Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT)
February 04, 2025

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Table of Contents

Linear TV—the marketing industry’s equivalent of a landline phone. You know, that thing nobody admits to using, but somehow every grandparent, doctor's office, and customer service hotline still depends on? Every few years, some tech evangelist bursts onto the scene, foaming at the mouth, declaring TV’s death with the same confidence as someone who just discovered intermittent fasting and won’t shut up about it.

And yet, here we are. Still watching. Still buying. Still pretending TV is irrelevant while secretly knowing more about the latest crime procedural than we’d care to admit. Because let’s face it—when that Law & Order marathon rolls around at 2 AM, you’re not scrolling TikTok, you’re glued to that screen, pretending you’re the detective who just cracked the case.

But marketers? They’re in full-blown denial. They’ve shoved TV into the attic alongside fax machines, AOL CDs, and those weirdly heavy first-generation iPods. They treat it like a relic, assuming that if something doesn’t come with a real-time engagement dashboard, it must not be valuable. They ignore the data, the reach, the effectiveness—all in favor of chasing the latest shiny digital trend, even if that trend is a bunch of influencers awkwardly hawking vitamin gummies in their bathroom mirrors.

Enter Alina Jasper, VP of Market at Marketing Architects. She’s not here to coddle marketers or pat them on the back for their “data-driven” digital obsession. She’s here to take a sledgehammer to their misconceptions and remind them that, for all their bravado about digital-first strategies, they’ve been completely gaslit into abandoning one of the most powerful marketing channels in history.

And she’s not here to sugarcoat it.

“TV isn’t just alive—it’s delivering more punch than half the TikTok dances that clog our feed.”

Translation? While marketers are busy drooling over micro-targeted CPMs and influencer engagement rates that collapse the second someone stops doing “get ready with me” videos, TV continues to rake in massive audiences, drive real-world impact, and make actual money—not just likes, shares, and whatever the hell a “brand impression” is supposed to mean in 2024.

So why the heck does the industry keep pretending it’s dead? Because digital platforms have spent years convincing you it is. And Alina Jasper is here to call out that nonsense for what it is: one of the biggest marketing delusions of the modern age.

The Marketing Crime Scene: Over-Targeting, Over-Hyping Digital, and Third-Party Data Addiction

Let’s be real—marketers have an unhealthy relationship with digital. They’re like that one friend who insists their ex was the love of their life, even though everyone around them knows it was a toxic dumpster fire. Instead of facing reality, they double down, convinced that if they just optimize their strategy one more time, surely those ultra-personalized, micro-targeted digital ads will start driving actual results instead of vanity metrics.

But here’s the kicker: TV still works. And marketers know it, deep down. They just don’t want to admit they’ve been suckered into a decade-long digital hype cycle that’s made them allergic to long-term thinking.

“TV is really harder to measure than a digital channel,” Jasper explains. “And as marketers have gotten more used to digital… we’ve gotten really addicted to those short-term, immediate metrics.”

Jasper calls it out plainly:

“There has been a concerted effort to say that TV is dead. Digital is the only place you should be.”

This isn’t just marketers being lazy—this is a full-blown gaslighting campaign by digital ad platforms that need you to believe TV is obsolete. Why? Because if you start redistributing those ad dollars, you might just notice that your brand awareness, conversions, and actual sales start improving in ways that a bunch of over-targeted, algorithmically-delivered banner ads never did.

And yet, here we are. Instead of facing the truth, marketers keep buying into the same digital fantasy. They chase micro-targeted, hyper-optimized audiences, convinced they’re making the most of their ad spend. They obsess over click-through rates, engagement stats, and vanity KPIs while ignoring the fact that their audience is still watching TV—probably more than they think.

But the crime scene is even messier than that. Because marketers aren’t just avoiding TV—they’re actively sabotaging themselves with a broken, bloated digital strategy that prioritizes instant gratification over long-term impact.

And like any great marketing crime, the culprits aren’t hiding. They’re in plain sight.

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