Jason Wiese from VAB and Amit Sharan from Tatari have prepared several analyses and real-world examples to show how TV campaigns deliver on brand KPIs across the marketing funnel, building on their recent study “25 Ways TV Grows Brands or Powering Performance Through Full-Funnel Business Outcomes”. In the marketing guide, they focused on exploring the impact of TV on brand full-funnel outcomes and presented their findings alongside several case studies.
NOTE ON METHODOLOGY
Over the past 10 years, VAB has analysed campaigns from more than 1,000 brands in 80 different categories, a large number of which are e-commerce companies (or digital native companies), focused on direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales.
During their research, they used 30 different metrics to analyse brands, covering both classic data on TV advertising and its impact on brands (TV ad spend, TV ad impressions, share of voice), and other output data such as brand awareness, web traffic measurement, conversions (e.g. app downloads), sales, share of market, stock price or company valuation. In their analyses, they also draw on independent sources such as Nielsen Ad Intel measurement, ComScore’s Media Metrix, Google Trends, and many others.
KEY BENEFITS OF TV
Based on a long-term analysis, they have concluded that brands of all sizes are able to accelerate their growth if they are able to leverage the seven key benefits that TV offers.
Storytelling – the audiovisual side of advertising can support a strong brand identity and increase customer engagement
Accessibility – the high availability of goods in e-commerce allows brands in this segment to be “seen earlier” thanks to TV
Legitimisation – strengthens brand reputation by associating the product or service with a quality programme
Targeting – data-driven solutions such as addressable TV, VOD or data-driven linear TV bring greater efficiency and eliminate wasted resources
Availability – advanced TV measurement delivers effective solutions that reduce traditional input costs, making TV advertising more accessible to all
Halo effect – TV significantly improves the performance and ROI of all other digital platforms (websites, mobile apps, social media profiles, etc.)
Full-funnel output – improves brand management and results by measuring and strengthening TV attribution capabilities
HOW TO MAKE A SUCCESSFUL CUSTOMER JOURNEY
In the purchase funnel, TV advertising can deliver results for brands at each stage of the customer journey, including Awareness - Consideration - Intent - Purchase.
The table below shows 25 ways TV grows brand performance during a customer journey in individual stages of the marketing funnel.
In the recent webinar, VAB’s Jason Wiese and Tatari’s Amit Sharan focused on some of them in each marketing funnel stage, providing specific case studies from Tatari and other insights.
HOW TV POWERS BRAND AWARENESS
In the first stage of the purchase funnel - increasing brand awareness among customers - the benefits of TV are quite obvious. It legitimises the brand, reinforcing its reputation through association with a quality TV show, turning it into a household name and helping it break through beyond the TV environment.
Amit Sharan from Tatari presented a case study of the meditation and sleep app Calm. Over Christmas Eve, the company launched its first brand campaign on the LeBron TV show, spending GBP 300 thousand, a significant media investment for them. As the chart below shows, although the media investment returned to its original level soon after the brand campaign was launched, the return on investment increased many times.
Below is a specific comparison of the amount of investment and the actual sales of the product before and after the TV ad. While the ad spend increased by 7.3%, sales grew by 71%, resulting in a 250% increase in reach. TV thus helped increase sales in other digital channels as well.
As confirmed by long-term research, continuous investment over several years in TV advertising clearly brings greater brand awareness among consumers for many brands that are initially newcomers and disruptors. As an example, below is the development of TV investment by 30 brands that in aggregate invested over USD 3 billion in TV between 2017 and 2021.
Investing in TV advertising for product launches in a very strong mattress category has not only given Casper and Purple brand awareness and a competitive advantage but also increased the number of unique visitors to their websites several-fold.
TV SUPPORTS PURCHASE CONSIDERATION
At the next point in the customer journey, which is consideration, the potential customer is already considering the purchase options, focusing on information search. Brands that continuously invest in TV advertising are also experiencing an increase in the number of search queries on the internet. The table below shows examples of 10 brands that have seen an increase in internet search queries resulting from increased TV spend.
As an example, Amit Sharan of Tatari cited the case study of lingerie brand Knix, which has seen an increase in search queries year on year in parallel with its increased TV spend, see the chart below.
They attribute a similar role to TV’s impact on the increase in social media conversation. They include posts, likes, shares and comments in social actions. The table below shows examples of 10 brands where an increase in TV investment went hand in hand with an increase in social media traffic.
At the same time, TV can expand the target group and bring new lucrative customers with higher purchasing power to the brand’s website. The 30 brands we mentioned in the introduction (in the awareness stage), which were newcomers and market disruptors, gained new visitors with higher purchasing power thanks to investments in TV advertising and increased the average age of their website users from 43.2 to 49.9.
CONSIDERATION IS FOLLOWED BY PURCHASE INTENT
TV advertising also works well in the intent phase where it can deliver more web traffic, motivates audiences to take action, supports app downloads and customer acquisition.
Following the launch of the TV campaign, brands are experiencing an influx of new visitors to their online stores. As the results for the 36 emerging brands included in the research show, online traffic increased by 56% after the launch of the TV campaign, resulting in a total of 1 million new visitors. For long-term TV campaigns, the monthly traffic increase was 85% (1.6 million new visitors per month).
The higher the volume of TV spend, the greater the increase in website traffic can be achieved. Brands that invested more than USD 10 million succeeded in achieving triple-digit traffic growth (chart at right).
NO BRANDS ARE TOO YOUNG FOR TV
Brands often target the same viewers, and TV can help them expand the audience. No brands are too young for TV to help them bring new users to their digital platforms, according to Jason Wiese. In one of the largest studies, which spanned four years and included 140 brands across 25 different categories, VAB and Tatari looked at the influx of new users on brands’ websites, and it was the youngest brands that performed best.
Symbiosis of TV and mobile apps
Television has a direct impact on traffic to mobile app sites that advertise on TV, according to the research. During the 15-month research, 46 mobile apps from various sectors such as gaming, finance, e-commerce (Walmart, Best Boy), travel (Orbitz, Uber) and sports (NBA, Yahoo Sports) were tracked together with the impact of TV advertising on traffic to their digital platforms. The apps monitored that had ads on TV saw a 25% increase in unique users, while those off TV faced a 20% decrease.
According to the study, high-value brand visitors are also more likely to return to and spend more time on digital platforms after consuming TV ads. Brands thus achieve better engagement with customers.
IMPACT OF TV ADVERTISING ON SALES
Finally, there is the last stage of the purchase funnel and the impact of TV on sales. Television is a catalyst for rapid short-term growth and long-term sales increases. Sales increases occur immediately in the year of TV launch, as the results for the brands surveyed show in the table below.
Many brands and research studies confirm the correlation between multi-year investments in TV and long-term sales growth.
IMPACT ON ATTRACTING INVESTMENTS AND COMPANY VALUATION
According to Jason Wiese, in addition to boosting the entire purchase funnel, TV also has an impact on company value creation, such as driving equity investment and increasing the company’s valuation.
Expanding and growing the customer base through a new TV campaign often spurs additional funding from investors. 75% of the total USD 5 billion investor fund was raised by the 10 companies surveyed (in the table below) during the period when they were able to expand their customer base through increased TV spend.
Many of the companies that have become unicorn brands worth more than USD 1 billion have expanded their customer base by investing in TV.
WHAT CAN THE TV ECOSYSTEM BRING TO YOUR BRAND?
As VAB’s extensive study and Tatari’s analyses show, TV can deliver short-term sales as well as long-term results, it is suitable and accessible for all types of brands, regardless of their size, age or budgets, and helps them across the purchase funnel. The TV ‘halo effect’ impacts a brand’s other digital platforms, including search queries, social media interaction, website traffic, and mobile app downloads. TV also accelerates the financial impact on the brand as it can help with the funding from investors and strengthen the value of the company.
Source: thevab.com
