TVB Releases 2020 American Conversation Word of Mouth Study

Local TV Outperforms Every Other Media Platform in Trust and Engagement, Survey Reveals

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TVB, the not-for-profit trade association representing America’s local broadcast television industry and the organization behind local TV’s shift to impressions-based buying, released its 2020 American Conversation Study in partnership with Engagement Labs earlier this week.

The results couldn’t be clearer—if you’re a marketer, you can’t afford to underutilize TV, especially local broadcast TV.

It’s long been understood that word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing, driving up to 50% of consumer sales. But can this influencer be influenced by media platforms? To find the answer, TVB commissioned Engagement Labs, a word-of-mouth specialist, to assess and quantify the role media platforms have in driving Americans’ conversations. The top media influencer was television, particularly for daily news, entertainment and political conversations. Six of ten respondents said their political conversations were affected by TV.

Out of the 2,000 adults 18+ sampled, 68% reported being somewhat to very likely to share news from their local TV station. Fifty-eight percent of all respondents said they reference stories heard on local news in daily conversations; for home improvement and furniture opinion leaders this number rises to 72%. Seventy-one percent of financial and automotive opinion leaders said they refer to local news stories in daily conversations.

The 2020 American Conversation Study also revealed interesting data when it comes to believability and trust. Local broadcast TV news was number one for both believability and trust, cited by 81% of respondents. Of all media, Americans trust social content the least (31%), with three out of five respondents reporting that “fake news” is the most prevalent on social media. In addition, only 59% said they trust cable news.

“Television has great impact on American conversations,” said Hadassa Gerber, Chief Research Officer at TVB. “In a world dominated by ‘fake news’, it’s imperative that advertisers associate with a believable and trusted platform—local broadcast TV, the trust medium.”

The 2020 American Conversation Study is available on TVB through this link.