How to understand the impact of your TV campaign in digital...
TV ads in the UK turned 50 in 2015... The very first spot aired in the UK was for Unilever's Gibbs S.R. toothpaste, and was a 1-minute-long black-and-white ad demonstrating how using S.R. toothpaste would please your gums and your teeth...
In more than 50 years, and we cannot say things have changed that much. Take, for example the very first ads during the 60s. The approach wasn't very different though from the one used today. What has changed, though, is how much this media weighs in the communication plans and the business expertise that makes it get better.
Having said that, we need to add that TV is not an exact science: lots of parameters are to be taken into account. Lots of them are purely qualitative and their impact is not easy to get. It is very hard then, in these conditions, to be thinking of a ROI strategy! But, as a complement to the business expertise, it is now possible to adopt an objective approach thanks to a series of actions that produce key KPIs and indicators.
As a matter of fact, a TV campaign can have an impact on the sales, the brand image but also on some digital media, like websites and mobile apps. This latter case is particularly interesting when we know that, usually, TV-viewers are going online really quickly after having seen a TV ad. We have observed this situation on website like JustEat, and even companies that don't really look for a "drive to web" effect. This impact usually lasts for a few minutes, when we can observe a big traffic increase.
To optimise your media plan
Knowing the part of the population who took the time to visit your website or download your app actually gives you a good idea of the population you did reach and how much they were interested by your product. By comparing the incremental traffic following each TV spot, it is possible to optimise your media plan in real-time. It is therefore possible to answer some issues, like finding the most efficient channel, the creative that was the most drive to web...
And we can go even further! When tracking a website, we can know priceless information about the visitors, like which device they used, from where they arrived (search engines, direct arrival, etc.), but, most importantly, the clickstream data. The analysis is therefore more precise, because we can compare the information about the TV-viewers with the one about the web visitors. It also allows us to help our clients optimise their media plan and get new long-term learnings. For example, do the TV viewers that were exposed to the TV ad convert more easily than the ones who are not? Have those TV viewers visited the website before? Is it possible to help them convert via an emailing or a retargeting campaign?
We haven't said it, but all this approach requires some data collection and a sharp analysis, delivered by our algorithms. We are always looking for new methods to find the incremental traffic generated by TV ads and minimise our error rate.
By doing this, we assure our clients the best results!
