Viewer attention to TV advertising strongly correlates to brand search volume in Google, reveals a new report from researchers at the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware, SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University, and Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego. The new report, titled “How Viewer Tuning, Presence, and Attention Respond to Ad Content and Predict Brand Search Lift”, was published in Marketing Science in January 2022.
This peer-reviewed research validates the importance of Attention for driving brand outcomes and spurring consumer intent. With search a key indicator of consumer interest, the connection between TV advertising and search volume is important. For the study, researchers evaluated TVision's second-by-second Tuning, Viewability, and Attention data for 180 national television ads that aired during two NFL football playoff games. This data was compared to Google search volume data. The analysis shows that viewer attention, at 0.106 is significantly more indicative of brand search lift than presence (0.013) or tuning (0.006).
This indicates that being exposed to an ad on TV, but not being attentive to the ad, drove very little direct brand search activity - almost as little as when the TV was on, but no one was in the room. In contrast, there was a marked improvement in brand search activity when viewers paid attention to the brand's ad on TV. The researchers surmised that brands can use Attention data to predict ad response and optimize media buying.
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