Study: Website traffic correlates with TV advertising
September 22, 2015
Findings from the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) suggest that website traffic rises and falls in direct correlation with TV advertising for the majority of call-to-action brands, which depend on immediate results from marketing efforts. The VAB’s study, Ignition Point: The TV-Traffic Correlation for Call-to-Action Brands, examines a cross-section of 125 brands in six categories (restaurants, retail, travel, telecommunications/location-based mobile apps, financial and insurance) representing more than $30 billion in TV advertising in 2014.
Fully 82 per cent of these brands showed a direct correlation between TV advertising and website traffic. Of the 85 brands with unique visitor increases, 87 per cent had upped TV spending – an average of 22 per cent increase in spending and 24 per cent increase in visitors. Of the 40 brands with unique visitor decreases, 70 per cent had lowered TV spending – an average of 10 per cent less TV spending and 9 per cent decrease in visitors.
“TV is the great activator in Internet commerce,” said Sean Cunningham, President & CEO of the Video Advertising Bureau, which published the report as the second in a What’s Driving Digital series. “A majority of brands with the most on the line for big sales now see their website traffic follow the curve of their investment in TV advertising. TV advertising does more than generate awareness; it triggers the most important action at a time when the Internet functions as a brand’s storefront to the world.”
The report studies a cross-section of call-to-action advertisers – large, midsized, small, national, regional and local brands with more than 100,000 unique visitors per month as measured by comScore. While the specific ratios of advertising to traffic vary, the pattern is predominant and consistent. On a category level, 72 per cent of travel brands showed a direct correlation between TV advertising and website traffic, versus 76 per cent of restaurants, 82 per cent of retail, 85 per cent of insurance, 86 per cent of financial, and 100 per cent of telco/apps.