Television provides the most memorable advertising, according to research commissioned by the organisers of the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

The research, which was conducted by pollsters YouGov and management consultancy Deloitte, found that 64% of people who watched television found TV commercials were one of the three media which had the most impact.

The findings will fuel arguments by the commercial TV sector that television advertising remains a powerful marketing medium in the face of the growing popularity of the internet.

Tess Alps, CEO of Thinkbox, pointed out that there are more thorough measures of the effectiveness of TV advertising in the market, but said the research's finding that TV was the most impactful medium confirmed "every piece of evidence" out there.

Alps said: "I think the reason people are now more conscious of any form of advertising, and part of the reason why TV is so powerful, is because of the internet -- people are better equipped to do something about it immediately.

"Which is why the combionation of TV and online is so powerful."

But TV, like other media, is suffering heavily from a number of factors, including the recession. The consensus amongst TV buyers at media agencies is that ad revenues across commercial TV will fall 16% in the third quarter of 2009 compared with the same period last year.

The YouGov/Deloitte research also found that, after TV, newspaper advertising was the second hardest-hitting medium. 30% of those polled credited it as the most impactful medium.

Magazine advertising scored third place in the survey, followed by radio and outdoor.

The research also found that 44% of the sample used the internet to research a brand or company after seeing an ad on TV. Yet only 8% of respondents rated internet advertising as high-impact, and just 12% deemed search ads as the most memorable form of advertising.

But, according to the findings, nearly 25% of the 2,000 respondents said that they were impervious to the effects of advertising.

Source article: MediaWeek