Ad Effectiveness: TV Plus Digital Significantly Outperforms Digital Only

Adding television to digital media improves overall ad campaign performance compared to digital-only — including significantly higher time-spent with ads, brand recall and purchase intent. 

That’s the main takeaway from a just-released, panel-based study from Comcast Cable’s sales division, Effectv, and MediaScience. 

For the study, conducted last September, Effectv and …

5 comments about "Ad Effectiveness: TV Plus Digital Significantly Outperforms Digital Only".
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  1. Tom Tyler from GCTVTexas, September 23, 2020 at 1:51 p.m.

    Thanks for the link to the study! 

  2. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, September 23, 2020 at 1:54 p.m.

    Very interesting, but this is a "forced" or "invited" ad exposure study which does not come close to replicating the normal situation for either medium. In reality, less than 50% of the program viewers will "watch" an average TV commercial not 94% and I expect that the corrsponding figure for digital is much lower than 78%. While I happen to believe that an average TV commercial has more impact than an average digital ad the only way to demonstrate what this study is attempting to show is by doing it the hard way and measuring the effects of TV and digital ads, plus combinations of same, in actual, real world exposure situations, taking into account whatever limitations are there---such as TV commercial zapping, people leaving the room, the fact that a certain percentage of the digital "exposures" never happen due to fraud, etc.

  3. John Grono from GAP Research, September 23, 2020 at 6:52 p.m.

    Thank you Karlene.

    It's a tad odd that they only balanced the n=147 by gender and not by age.   I think age would be a more explanatory factor than gender.   For example, if it was n=140 for 65+ and n=7 for Under 65, the results would be very different if it was n=140 Under 35 and n=7 35+.

    I'll download the report later, but there seems to be an incongruity in the large differential between Digital and TV+Digital which in high for Time and Brad Recall, but a small differential for Purchase Intent.   Any ideas before I read the report?   It could be that in 'Digital mode' people think "Buy", whereas when in "TV mode" they think "Brand" (which I have always suspected as the case but I had no evidence).

  4. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, September 23, 2020 at 7:52 p.m.

    John, the "report" does not really tell you all you need to know to evaluate its findings.For example, I assume that those exposed only to ads on FB and YouTube "saw" each brand's ad twice---but this isn't explained so it might be only once. And those who were exposed on FB or YouTube plus "TV" saw one digital and one TV commercial---I guess. In which case the comparison is fair. If, however, the digital-only groups  got one exposure per brand while the TV plus digital group got two ads per brand---one a TV commercial, the other a digital ad ---that raises serious questions---right?Anyway, while I happen to agree with the general findings, I'm not at all sure that this study  is robust enough ---for a number of reasons---to support the strongly stated conclusions.

  5. John Grono from GAP Research, September 23, 2020 at 8:18 p.m.

    Point taken Ed.

    It had crossed my mind as to frequency and content duration and their impact on 'Time'.   But I was going to check the report first.

    I think the design and approach is good, so I encourage the initiative - I'd just like to look at the detail.   That incogruity in 'Purchase Intent' might shine some light.

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