It is important to respond, to act. Ask Gordon Brown about biscuits and he’d better respond with something – anything – or else there will be trouble. Deafening silence rarely suggests success.

Advertising doesn’t always expect an instant response; often it is trying to change the way people feel or think about a brand.  But if advertising doesn’t eventually lead to a response (ideally a purchase or a change in behaviour), then it is difficult to see its point.

But the issue of attribution is a tricky one; how can you identify everything that has contributed to a response?  This is just as true in online media, despite their supposed easy accountability.  The online world is trying to ditch the ‘last click wins’ model in order to assign value to other online ad exposures that precede the final response.  Fair enough, but once the online world has opened that particular can of worms they must acknowledge the contribution of the radio ad, the PR coverage in the paper and, most significantly, the TV campaign that is running, or has previously run.  Is, in fact, the supposed accountability of online more misleading than enlightening?  This question of credit going where it is due is crucial if advertisers are to gain a better understanding of how advertising works.

So it is rather handy that a new econometric study from MediaCom, commissioned by Thinkbox, has measured TV advertising’s ability to send people online. It is the first time that the instant effect TV ads have on web response has been measured and made publically available.

Over a period of three months MediaCom analysed over 175,000 TV spots and the activity they caused on different advertisers’ websites in 10 minute intervals for seven leading brands across six different markets. Sounds like fun doesn’t it?

Two of the headline findings from their analysis are:

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