TV advertising drives cheaper online journeys

The pandemic has boosted online shopping and retail media but TV advertising retains a vital role for advertisers, according to new research.

Why it matters

With online-born businesses now the biggest category of advertiser on TV (spending £1bn in 2021), TV industry body Thinkbox commissioned an econometric analysis of ten online businesses, proven to have used TV advertising to drive their growth, to analyse when and why to use TV.

Key insights

• TV makes search work harder

TV advertising drives cheaper online journeys because it prompts more people (66%) to go to the brand directly, or search for the brand specifically, rather than just the category. TV also has a positive effect on click-through rates in both organic and paid search. 

• Three signs that a brand should use TV

1. When a brand needs to scale first and fast: a second-hand online car dealership reached 500,000 visits per week in five months after scaling up its TV spend; TV drove 48% of all visits across this period. 

2. When understanding a brand’s proposition makes people more likely to buy: a home gym equipment business with a brand new proposition used TV to reach 200,000 visits per week at a cost per visit 300 times lower than their hero product’s cost.

3. When a brand runs out of efficient online buys: a dieting brand had a peak weekly web traffic of 111,000 visitors and an average of 23,300 prior to trialing TV. Following their TV launch, the peak rose to 378,000 visitors and the average increased to 99,000 visitors.

• The effects that can be expected

1. An immediate, visible response: across the ten brands modelled, TV drove 42% of all visits.

2. A TV cost-per-visit comparable to search advertising: across the ten brands analysed, TV drove 50 million visits at an average cost per visit of £2.11.

3. A layer of base sales to rely on and a brand that’s a saleable asset: brand-focused TV advertising (alongside OOH) produced the longest-lasting sales effects with 50% of sales seen in the first 14 weeks following activity and 50% seen in the remaining two years afterwards.