NEW YORK: Smart TV is an effective medium for advertising, as a new report shows that banner ads on these devices can work as well as or better than traditional TV ads.

Nielsen, the research company, carried out a survey for YuMe, the video brand advertising technology provider, and LG, the consumer electronics group, looking at smart TV users and usage.

A mixture of tools were used, including a 100-strong survey with telephone follow-up interviews and a nationwide online survey with 400 respondents. Ad types tested included banner ads, portal banners and picture in picture (PIP) ads.

Overall, advertising on smart TV was found to have a more positive impact on brand metrics than traditional TV with an Ad Index score of 114. Traditional TV had the benchmark score of 100.

While small home page banner ads performed slightly less well than traditional TV (scoring 88), portal banners worked slightly better (104), PIP ads better still (123), while a full package was the most effective channel overall, on 134.

The latter was found to be especially good at promoting purchase intent and recommendation, scoring 20 and 22 points more respectively than traditional TV.

Using PIP alone, however, did not increase purchase intent, although it did result in a useful 32 point jump in brand recall.

The study also found that smart TV viewers were more accepting of and responsive to ads that were applicable to them. Just over two thirds (67%) of respondents said they would click on smart TV ads that promoted products or brands they were interested in, while 59% said they would do so on ads that were relevant to them.

Smart TV viewers cited the large screen as its main advantage, with 61% using this screen to watch free internet video content, 60% to browse the internet and 50% to watch paid internet video content. Entertainment, weather and news apps were also heavily used.

But even if banner ads work on smart TVs, the question remains over how well these devices fit in with the growing viewer trend for dual-screening. 

Admap editor Colin Grimshaw noted last year that people prefer to use tablets or smartphones for secondary viewing and suggested that connected TVs had perhaps "come too late to the party".

A similar view emerged from a small-scale survey by Strategy Analytics, reported by Broadcast Engineering, which found a general level of dissatisfaction with smart TVs and concluded that manufacturers and software developers were failing to usefully enhance the TV experience.

Data sourced from YuMe, Broadcast Engineering; additional content by Warc staff