Editorial Team Local ad spending in the US is on track to blow past $190 billion by 2026, according to eMarketer, but a lot of that money gets wasted. Advertisers are still running local TV and digital ads in separate silos, creating disjointed campaigns that don’t work together. Platforms like Viamedia’s Omnichannel OS are built to fix this specific problem, but the real question is whether they actually manage to connect the dots between a TV spot and a digital conversion.
Key Takeaways
- Combining local TV with digital ads boosts brand recall by an average of 22% over single-channel campaigns.
- Viamedia’s Omnichannel OS lets you manage ad buys across local broadcast, streaming, and display from a single dashboard.
- Its attribution models link conversions back to local TV ads, giving you data that old-school broadcast measurement just can’t provide.
- Local broadcast TV commands over 60% of ad spend in key demographics, making it a non-negotiable part of any plan aiming for complete reach.
- To make this work, you need sharp audience segmentation and ad creative that’s built specifically for both linear TV and different digital formats.
1. The 22% Boost: Integrated Campaigns Drive Superior Recall
Nielsen’s research consistently backs up what practitioners have known for years: campaigns that mix linear TV and digital get a 22% higher brand recall on average. It’s the reinforcement that does the work. Seeing an ad during the local news and then getting a related ad on a streaming app or social feed makes the message stick in a way that a single exposure never could.
I see this recall bump deliver real results for my clients, from regional car dealerships to healthcare networks. Imagine a local dealer in suburban Atlanta running a sale on a new SUV. They can run a 30-second spot on WSB-TV’s 6 PM newscast while Viamedia’s Omnichannel OS pushes out display ads on local news sites and hits people with geo-fenced mobile ads if they’re within 15 miles of the lot. That’s how you get coordination. The consumer is immersed in the message, building a mental connection that pays off when they’re ready to buy. The OS is the central hub where media buyers can control the whole show, managing frequency and message sequencing to tell one clear story instead of just making a lot of noise.
2. The 60% Local TV Dominance: Why Broadcast Remains a Foundation
You hear constantly about the big shift to digital, but the IAB’s own reports show that local broadcast TV is still a beast, pulling in over 60% of local ad spend for important groups like adults 55+ and in big-money sectors like political campaigns and retail. Local TV is a foundational medium that digital makes better, not one that digital is killing off.
I see a lot of marketers, especially ones new to local, make the classic error of putting all their chips on digital. They assume that’s where everyone is. But ignoring local TV means you’re walking away from a huge, captive audience. Think about a personal injury law firm in Midtown Atlanta. Their ideal client probably watches the local news on WXIA-TV every night. An ad there reaches thousands of people who aren’t searching for a lawyer right now but might need one tomorrow. Using the Omnichannel OS, that firm can place the TV spot and then retarget anyone who visited their website after seeing the ad. The TV spot builds awareness, and the digital campaign closes the loop by driving the conversion. Different channels simply do different jobs.
3. 35% Lift in Campaign ROI Through Unified Attribution
Proving that a TV ad drove a sale has always been the hardest part of a media buyer’s job. Viamedia’s Omnichannel OS tries to solve this by tying measurement together, and early users are reporting an average 35% lift in campaign ROI compared to when they managed TV and digital budgets in separate spreadsheets. The platform achieves this by actually connecting a local TV ad view to what someone does next online, like visiting a website, searching for the brand, or even walking into a store (thanks to data partnerships).
The old argument, and I’ve heard it a million times, is that TV is just for “awareness” and you can’t track it to a sale. That’s changing. Say a regional grocery chain runs a weekly special and airs a spot on WGCL-TV. The OS can spot the surge in traffic to their online ordering page that happens right after the ad airs by connecting TV viewership data with web analytics via anonymized IP data. No, it’s not perfect one-to-one tracking (that’s still the holy grail), but it’s light years ahead of just looking at Nielsen ratings. For an advertiser, this means you can finally make a real case for your TV budget. You can show that TV spots are driving online actions, and you can even tweak the TV ads based on which ones get the best digital response, creating a feedback loop that just wasn’t possible for most of us until recently.
4. The Overlooked Truth: Local TV’s Hyper-Targeting Capabilities
A lot of marketers still think you can only do hyper-targeting online. That’s just wrong. Local TV has caught up, thanks to advanced systems like the ones Viamedia provides. This isn’t your parents’ TV advertising with broad demographic buys. Through data deals with cable companies, you can now do household-level addressable ads that are just as targeted as digital. An Alpharetta furniture store can literally show one ad to a high-income household and a different ad to a family with young kids, even if they’re watching the same show at the same time.
Most advertisers aren’t even using this capability yet, which is a huge missed opportunity. What if you’re a real estate agent selling luxury homes in Buckhead? Instead of wasting money broadcasting an ad across the whole Atlanta market, you could use a platform like the Omnichannel OS to hit only high-income households on their favorite local channels. The wasted spend drops to near zero. Then you can serve complementary digital ads to those exact same households. This level of precision completely changes the game for local TV. If you still think of it as a blunt instrument for mass reach, you’re working with seriously outdated information.
Disagreeing with the Conventional Wisdom: The “Digital-First” Fallacy
The “digital-first” mantra that’s so popular in marketing circles right now is, in my opinion, a huge mistake for many local businesses. The standard advice is that digital is cheaper, more targeted, and easier to measure, so you should start there. I couldn’t disagree more. If your business depends on foot traffic or serves a specific local community, going all-in on digital means you’re leaving a giant hole in your market presence because digital reach is not the same as total market reach.
Sure, digital gives you great data and conversion tracking, but it’s slow at building broad, immediate brand awareness the way local TV can. If a new restaurant opens near Piedmont Park, a few social media ads won’t have the same impact as a spot on the local news or a consistent ad run during primetime. That’s how you generate real buzz overnight. People still trust their local TV stations, and that trust carries weight. This is why a tool like the Omnichannel OS is so useful, it treats TV as an equal partner to digital, letting you properly integrate the two. The goal has to be audience-first, and if your audience watches local TV, you have to be there. Ignoring it is a strategic error. The main takeaway for any local business is to stop thinking in channel-specific silos. The biggest wins come from a synchronized campaign that hits people consistently across TV and digital, and a unified platform is the most effective way to make that happen.
What is Viamedia’s Omnichannel OS?
It’s a software platform for managing, running, and measuring integrated ad campaigns that combine local TV and digital from one central dashboard. The whole point is to make broadcast, streaming, and digital ads work together.
How does the Omnichannel OS integrate local TV with digital advertising?
It lets you plan and buy your local TV and cable spots in the same place you manage your digital ads (display, video, etc.). It then uses data to see how your TV ads influence online behavior, putting it all into one report.
Can Viamedia’s platform help with audience targeting on local TV?
Yes, it uses data from partners to do much more precise targeting on local TV. In some areas, this includes addressable ads that can target individual households, so you can reach very specific demographic groups.
What kind of attribution models does the Omnichannel OS use?
It uses unified attribution models that try to link a local TV ad view to a specific online action, like a website visit, an app download, or a physical store visit. This gives you a much clearer picture of how your whole campaign is performing.
Is the Omnichannel OS suitable for small local businesses?
Yes, it can be. For a small business, the main advantage is getting more out of your ad budget by making sure your TV and digital messages are working together and reinforcing each other on the channels that matter most in your town.
