TV ads consistently outperformed other options from 2010-2016 with up to seven times the relative lift over paid search and five times better than display advertising, according to a study from Neustar.
The report, Evaluating the Effectiveness of TV Advertising in the Modern Media Landscape, commissioned by Turner and Horizon Media, makes clear that such performance comes despite what it calls ‘dramatic’ advancements in technology, new digital platforms and changes in consumer behaviour, and that TV continues to be the best vehicle to deliver a brand’s message seen by a large audience.
The survey also found that dollar for dollar, TV provides the most scale and delivers the highest return on ad spend from both a sales and awareness perspective. Across all of the industries examined in the research, TV had the highest relative efficiency in achieving KPIs, meaning at a given level of spend TV generates more business outcomes, when compared to other online and offline media channels.
Online video ads attached to premium streaming content were found to be more effective than user-generated platforms. With the explosion of sharing platforms and popularity of video format, professionally produced content was seen to be the most impactful, according to the report. TV was also found to have generated a significant cross-product halo effect on the brand’s portfolio outside of the one being featured in the advertisement, with one brand attributing 35% of sales to non-advertised products.
Yet despite this strength, the report warned that even TV will reach a saturation point, and the next marketing dollar should be spent elsewhere. It added that to ensure an optimised marketing mix, advertisers should adopt a data-driven approach that can inform the ideal media allocation across all channels based on all internal and external market conditions to meet their performance goals.
