During a recent interview I had with Hadassa Gerber, the chief research officer at TVB underscored the importance of communicating to companies and their ad agencies the synergy between linear broadcast television and their websites.
“The reason that we make it such a point about television motivating people to go online is [because] so many advertisers are just looking at the last click,” says Gerber. “Well, how did they get there in the first place?”
TVB’s 2024 Media Comparisons Study makes a strong case that in many instances it’s television. Of the 4,000 respondents to its survey, 60% said TV ads motivate them to begin doing research on a product that’s caught their eye. For autos, that figure climbs to 72%.
Granted, TVB is a trade association representing local TV broadcasters. But the group hired German research firm GfK to conduct the research, and it would be in neither the interest of GfK nor TVB to risk losing credibility by fiddling with the results.
The takeaway for broadcasters is linear TV and websites work well together in serving the public and advertisers alike. Just as important is the effect the combination has on reach. Combining the reach of broadcast websites and broadcast television extends total reach by 4%.
To put that into perspective, consider cable TV and broadcast. “If you take broadcast as a base, and you add on cable, that doesn’t even add a whole reach point. It’s 0.8%,” she says.
While this may seem obvious, Gerber says she has a slide in her presentation for members that explicitly lays out this fact to drive home how important the two together are to advertisers.
Perhaps it’s a good time to begin reiterating to advertisers that the consumer journey that ultimately ends up in a web click often begins by raising awareness via linear TV. One other thought: as NextGen TV, an IP-based television/data delivery mechanism matures, broadcasters would be well-served to begin planning how to leverage it to amplify their web presence.
