• by Aaron Baar , June 15, 2016

Television, it seems, is still the best way to get the word out about a new product in a competitive category, even if that category is part of the new media revolution. 

A study from the Video Advertising Bureau (cheekily titled “What’s App’ning”) finds a correlation between television advertising and traffic for mobile apps. In previous, similar reports, the VAB found similar correlations between pure-play Internet brands and call-to-action brands. 

“TV is unparalleled in its ability to sell stuff,” Danielle DeLauro, senior vice president of strategic and sales insights for the VAB, tells Marketing Daily. “There’s a huge amount of apps for people to download … to be a major player in the category, you have to have a TV campaign.”

For the study, the VAB evaluated TV spending and app traffic for 60 mobile apps across 10 categories (including games, ecommerce/retail, media, sports and tech/telco) between October and December 2015. The study found 77% of those cases showed a direct correlation between television ad spending and app traffic: when television ads ran, unique visitors went up 25%. When the ads didn’t run, visits dropped 20%. The correlation was most significant in the gaming category, which also has high Millennial appeal.

“There was a good correlation across all segments, but gaming had the highest,” says Jason Wiese, vice president of strategic insights for the VAB. 

The study also examined how television advertising affected launch traffic for new mobile apps. Games such as Blossom Blast and Mobile Strike each saw roughly a 2 million increase in unique visitors within a month of starting television advertising. 

Video game makers (including mobile and console game creators) spent roughly $630 million on TV advertising last year, an increase of 47% over 2014, according to VentureBeat.com (using data from iSpot.tv). Mobile game companies have also increased their presence on high profile TV events such as the Super Bowl in recent years, looking to generate more interest for their games. 

“Every year, the amount their spending in this category is increasing, and we expect that to continue,” DeLauro says.