Assessing TV Ad Spots by Immediate Online Response: Towards a Deeper Understanding

Abstract

The study aims to develop a deeper understanding of the practice of assessing TV ad spots by examining their immediate effects on various online activities. Over a span of 493,920 minutes, the authors merged minute-level brand and price search data with spot-level national and local TV advertisement data for three well-established pickup truck brands. They presented a generalizable modeling framework and demonstrated that one can reliably detect immediate online response to regular national and local ad spots, in terms of both own and competitor brand and price search. They found that the attitudinal response towards an ad creative, a variety of media placement factors, and the category interest of the audience can all systematically influence the rate of post-ad search response. Some of these moderating effects are similar between brand and price search, while others show divergence. Practical implications of the empirical findings are discussed.

Keywords: TV, Advertising, Attribution, Digital, Programmatic, Brand, Price, Search