TV-Driven Branded Search

Customer AttractionJoo, M.; Wilbur, K. C.; Cowgill, B.; Zhu, Y. · 2014Management Science
Topicstelevision advertising·online search·cross-media effects·search engine marketing·advertising elasticity·financial services

You are setting the media plan and your TV and search budgets sit in separate rooms, planned by separate teams. TV runs a morning flight; hours later, more people are typing your brand's name into Google instead of a generic category term. Do you time your search coverage to catch that surge, or let it hit a search operation that never knew the flight was coming? This research says the surge is real, fast, and mostly demand pulled from competitors, so the flights and the search plan should be built together.

TV doesn't just build awareness. It sends people searching for your brand within hours.

The common view treats TV and search as separate channels and assumes TV mainly lifts the whole category, helping rivals too. This research links hourly TV airings to online search and qualifies both beliefs. A brand's TV spend measurably raises searches for that brand by name, and in a mature, high-involvement category like financial services, almost all of that lift is searches taken from rivals, not new category demand. The question is no longer whether to connect the two channels, but how fast you can capture the demand TV creates.

Action guide

  1. Plan TV and search as one linked system, not two silos.TV airings push people to search for your brand within hours, so build TV flighting and the search plan together rather than running each on its own.
  2. Keep enough search budget and coverage ready to catch TV-driven branded demand.A 10% TV spend increase predicts about a 1.7% rise in branded searches over the next four days. This is about having enough coverage to absorb the volume TV creates.
  3. Time search readiness to your flights and the daily rhythm.The branded-search surge peaks roughly 6 to 11 hours after an ad airs; separately, ads that air in the morning draw the strongest search response. Line up search coverage with the hours and dayparts when the demand actually shows up.
  4. Credit TV for the branded searches it creates.Attribute part of branded-search activity to the TV that drove it, so the two channels are judged together instead of competing for the same demand.
  5. Set attribution windows long enough to catch the full effect.Category-wide search builds slowly and lasts about three days, so shorter windows will understate what TV contributed.
  6. Drive your own branded demand rather than free-ride on rivals' TV.In a mature financial-services category a brand's TV does little to lift searches for competitors, so plan to create your own demand.

Evidence

  • A brand's own TV airings raise searches for that brand by name: a 10% spend rise predicts about a 1.7% rise in branded searches over four days.
  • The search response (about 0.17) is larger than advertising's measured effect on sales in earlier studies. That's expected, since search is an earlier, top-of-funnel action, not because TV drives sales several times harder.
  • In a mature financial-services category, that lift is overwhelmingly searches taken from rivals, not growth in total category search (newer or fast-growing categories may behave differently).
  • A brand's TV does little to lift searches for competitors, so gains come from your own advertising, not rivals'.
  • The branded-search surge is fast but short, peaking about 6 to 11 hours after a brand's ad airs.
  • Category-wide search builds slowly and lasts roughly three days, behaving like a reminder.
  • The branded-search response is strongest in the morning and weakest in the late afternoon.
  • Among the top 25 online and top 25 traditional agencies surveyed, only three of the 50 coordinated online and offline campaigns at all.

Key takeaway

TV sends people searching for your brand within hours. Have enough search coverage ready to capture that demand.

Source

Joo, M., Wilbur, K. C., Cowgill, B., & Zhu, Y. (2014). Television advertising and online search. Management Science, 60(1), 56–73. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1741

Read the paper ↗

Evidence strength: Moderate (58,226 TV ads from 15 brands linked to over a billion Google searches; US financial-services category, hourly data, Oct-Dec 2011). The ~.17 figure is a responsiveness measure of how much branded searches rise when TV spend rises, not an ROI, payback, or return; the paper does not measure clicks, conversions, sales, or profit. The causal reading rests on assumed conditions the authors caution could be inflated by other media spend running alongside TV. Generalizes most confidently to mature, high-involvement categories with frequent online search; less so to new brands, low-involvement categories, other media, or sales and ROI outcomes.