TV Ads and Search Spikes : Toward a Deeper Understanding

Television advertisements lead some multitasking viewers to take immediate, measurable actions online. We analyze minute-by-minute TV ad insertion and online search data for daily fantasy sports and pick-up truck brands. TV ads with small audiences can produce detectable search spikes for the advertised brand, with 75% of incremental searches occurring within two minutes. TV ads also generate post-ad searches for competitor brands. Search spikes vary with ad content: they are larger after brandfocused ads than after price-focused ads, and after less-informative ads than after more-informative ads. Search spikes also vary with contextual media factors (e.g., TV network, daypart, program genre), but their effects differ across brands. Taken as a whole, our findings suggest that marketers should consider post-ad search spikes in conjunction with other metrics when evaluating and purchasing TV ads.

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