How can you get more ROI in a multi-screen world?

We live in a world of instant gratification. Wherever we are, and whatever we may be doing, when we want to know, to do, to buy we pull out our phones and search for satisfaction.

For marketers, a multi-screen world offers new opportunities for ROI. While TV accounts for 42% of all ad spending, or $78.8 billion annually,  we also know that 90% of consumers engage with a second screen* — think tablets and mobile phones — while watching TV. 

This means that in a multi-screen world, executing separate television and digital campaigns is a strategic miss. If that’s the case, why are so many of us still doing it?

The old TV measurement problem

In the past, channel-centric thinking, competing objectives, and data silos often stopped marketers from true cross-channel measurement. Even with the advent of marketing measurement best practices like marketing mix modeling, we lived with a significant blind spot around the true impact of TV advertising. 

TV airings data was hard to come by, and traditional Marketing Mix Modeling reports are often too high-level — and too slow — to offer actionable insights. So, while we’ve known for a long time that TV drives consumers online, we had no way to accurately attribute digital activity to granular TV investments.

The new TV attribution solution

Now, TV attribution makes it possible to connect the dots between TV airings data and digital activity. The resulting insights from TV attribution enable marketers to improve campaign strategies across both mass media and digital channels. 

At a high level, TV attribution carefully analyzes typical search query and site activity to establish a baseline. Then, minute-by-minute TV airings data is correlated with search and site data to detect — and accurately attribute — traffic driven by each TV ad spot. 

We’ve seen great results for marketers that have embraced this new marketing measurement best practice. For example, Nest assessed and improved cross-channel campaigning with TV attribution, achieving a 2.5x lift in search volumes and 5x increase in search and website responses by acting on resulting insights. 

For more details, read our new infographic to learn:

• How TV attribution reveals TV-to-digital behaviors
• How TV attribution insights help marketers quantify TV’s business value, optimize media buys, and empower creative teams
• How deeper understanding of consumers can lead to more effective cross-channel strategies

Time to improve your ROI?

Now that TV and digital data can be analyzed to reveal cross-channel behaviors, marketers have a new opportunity to improve both mass media and digital strategies. Next week, we’ll post our top 5 tips on amplifying TV dollars with digital. If you’re ready to get going on maximizing TV ROI, stay tuned.

Posted by:  Natasha Moonka, Google Analytics team

*Source: Neal Mohan, Google, “Video Ads and Moments That Matter,” Consumer Electronics Show 2015.