Marketers love arguing about channels. TV vs. digital. Radio vs. social. Outdoor vs. anything with a dashboard. But these debates miss the real point — and the real upside.
The question isn’t “Which channel is best?” The question is “What job does each channel do inside the customer’s brain?”
If you understand that, you can unlock something most teams never achieve: instant uplift across your entire campaign system.
The uncomfortable truth: Channels are not interchangeable.
The latest Ebiquity analysis shows that marketers consistently overestimate the effectiveness of newer digital channels and underestimate the fundamentals like TV and audio. IPA’s long-term studies back this up: the brands that outperform the market don’t pick channels — they orchestrate them.
Why? Because each channel activates a different evolved cognitive system. In other words: your media mix works when your brain does.
TV — The narrative engine
TV taps into the brain’s strongest memory encoders: faces, motion, and story. We evolved to track all three because they once kept us alive. Today, they keep us watching.
Hard data: According to the IPA Databank, TV is the most effective channel for driving long-term market share growth, contributing up to 40% more large business effects than digital-only campaigns.
Translation: if you want emotional association, fame, and mental availability, TV is the closest thing we have to cognitive superglue.
Audio & Radio — The imagination amplifier
When visuals are removed, the brain does something remarkable: it fills the gaps. Audio activates imagination, memory recall, and social-emotional processing.
Nielsen found that radio delivers a 17% higher ROI per dollar spent than many digital formats because it thrives in low-attention environments — commuting, cooking, working.
Audio is unmatched for reinforcing facts, slogans, and brand assets when attention is partial.
Social & Digital — The social-proof trigger
Digital channels aren’t “lower funnel.” They’re social proof machines. The brain evolved to seek cues from other people, assess tribe signals, and react to micro-interactions.
Done right, social media builds: • recognition through repetition • trust through peers • memory through interaction • relevance through commentary
A Meta-analysed cross-channel study found that campaigns using social + TV saw a 19% lift in incremental reach without increasing spend. Social doesn’t replace TV — it echoes it.
OOH — The environmental anchor
Humans evolved to scan the environment for signals — movement, colour, symbols, direction. Out-of-home advertising works because it fits into this ancient pattern.
That’s why simple OOH executions outperform complex ones. According to Ocean Outdoor’s neuroscience research, OOH increases brand recall by up to 16% when paired with digital video, because the brain logs the brand passively before it encounters the active message later.
OOH reinforces presence when attention is low — and primes the brain for the next touchpoint.
Why all four matter — and why teams miss this
Here’s the strategic unlock: campaigns only scale when they reach multiple memory systems at once.
• TV = emotional & narrative memory • Audio = verbal & imaginative memory • Social = social & interactive memory • OOH = environmental & cue-based memory
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute calls this building “distinctive memory structures.” The more parts of the brain your campaign touches, the more likely buyers are to remember your brand at the moment of choice — even if that moment is months away.
This is why IPA data consistently shows that multi-channel campaigns outperform single-channel ones by 57% in long-term business effects.
Actionable Insight: Don’t optimise your channels — align your brain systems.
If you want instant uplift, stop treating channels like interchangeable taps. Start mapping them to the cognitive systems they’re built for.
Because the most effective campaigns aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets — they’re the ones that understand how humans actually think.