Brands: How TV continues impacting digital

Recently Convertro studied how TV advertising was impacting the digital space. They studied brands who added TV to their marketing mix after having no TV ads in the past, those who had lowered their TV spend, those testing new TV avenues and those who have a strong televised presence. Their results: Television pushed direct traffic, traffic from PPC and Organic Brand Search and from PPC and Organic Non-Brand Search between 17% and 260%. As for the conversion numbers - those increased between 7% and 63%.

Why this difference when many are saying television advertising does nothing for brands in the online space?

"I think it is a general failure to consider the online buying experience in a holistic framework and specifically a misguided dependence by the majority of online marketers on a last click attribution approach," said Jeff Zwelling, CEO, Convertro. "Since most companies lack the ability to perform the most basic multi-click digital attribution, layering in the complexity of lift resulting from offline impact remains elusive. These marketers typically use self-reported data, surveys or other hypothetical (and biased) sampling methods in a feeble attempt to determine the true impact of TV. Even those that have the capability to directly measure impact on click-based traffic will often take the path of least resistance and simply apply a last click model to assess impacts on only direct traffic and branded search."

How can brands find that sweet spot - the place where television has an impact on online efforts?

"It is critical to cross-attribute the correct share of the lift experienced in each channel back to television so that clients can focus their spend in the right areas to drive the maximum possible revenue and profit. Using a methodology that fails to consider the impact of TV on all marketing channels under credits the immediate traffic impact and latent halo effects of TV's brand-equity-building results," said Zwelling.

Tags: ad trends, Convertro, online video, tv advertising