Thinkbox, along with Mediacom, has measured the impact of television on both immediate web response and other short-term response channels. It's the first time that the instant effect TV ads have on web response has been measured and made publically available.

When measuring impacts,TV is all too often seen as being less accountable in spite of the barrage of evidence to the contrary. The fact is, TV is no less accountable, TV is just harder to count! Consequently, when people have talked about 'TV's declining effectiveness', they usually mean that lower response rates via the dedicated telephone channel to their DRTV campaigns. Research by Mediacom demonstrated this point.

Superficial response analysis showed that DRTV was amongst one of the most expensive media channels in the media mix in terms of the cost per customer acquisition and that banners and search were the cheapest. However, after reducing DR investment in TV and shifting it online, the picture reversed. It became apparent that the offline channels, particularly television, were driving consumers online but that the online part of the customer journey was being credited with driving the final response.

Mediacom devised an econometric technique to link TV spots to the initial web activity conducted within a ten minute timeframe of the broadcast. In some cases, deeper levels of web interaction were measured, such as downloading a brochure, filling in a form or requesting more information. Seven brands were recruited across six different categories which were selected to be representative of the DR market, but also to represent the different strengths of the calls-to-action featured on TV ads. Over 175,000 TV spots were included within the analysis

From the analysis it has become apparent that the role of TV in driving response, particularly online, has been massively undervalued. Partially, this is down to the changing technological landscape. As phone rates decline, the web becomes more dominant but until now the effects have not been captured. Indeed TV's impact on online - and indeed the impact of offline media overall - all too often slip under the radar because of the more advanced measurement techniques needed in order to understand the bigger picture.