Unpacking the Short-Term and Long-Term Impact of TV

During this unprecedented time of restricted movement, how has TV impacted advertisers’ ability to drive digital engagement? To answer this, Effectv and TVSquared analyzed hundreds of U.S. brands over the past few months and released a report on the findings. One of the most revealing takeaways from the study is that there’s clear evidence of TV advertising driving both the short-term and long-term impact on brand engagement.

Here are more specific findings from the analysis:

• Among the analyzed brands, there is an average 4.7% lift in immediate visitors (those who go to a brand’s website within a half hour of that same brand’s ad airing on TV).
• When website visits are measured and recorded up to 14 days following the initial engagement, there is an 11.2% increase in visits. In other words, these immediate visitors are so highly engaged that they’re returning to that same brand’s website 2.3 times (on average) within two weeks of their first TV-driven visit!

The report’s findings support the hypothesis that TV advertising produces a “memory effect,” yielding additional interested consumers and website visitors over time. The longer a brand remains on-air to build and maintain a brand presence, the greater the prolonged impact will be.

In fact, on average, the longer-term impact of a TV campaign each week is anywhere from 3-6x higher than the immediate impact. Legal services, utilities, home improvement and financial services are among the ad categories with the strongest long-term results. These higher performing verticals should focus on continuous branding campaigns to drive awareness and recallability for when consumers are in-market for their specific offerings.

How important is it really for advertisers to stay on-air in order to reap the benefits of long-term impact? Extremely!

• The average prolonged impact of TV among all advertisers analyzed is 23%. So, for one week of airings, TV creates a halo effect that continues to influence audiences to take action for multiple weeks after. In other words, 23% of the impact carries over to each subsequent week that the ad continues to air.
• On the other hand, when advertisers decide to go off-air, the impact of campaigns deteriorates over time—creating missed opportunities to engage with consumers. For the weeks that advertisers go off-air, their total search and direct website visitation drops by -20% on average, compared to the weeks when they are advertising on TV.

Download TVSquared and Effectv’s new eBook, “The Halo Effect: TV Drives Digital,” here for even more insights.