Exploring the interaction between television and branded search advertising : Implications for real-time syncing strategies

Although the adoption of real-time syncing services—that is, services that synchronize online and television ads—is rising, there is still limited evidence about their effectiveness. We address this gap by examining the impact of coordinating branded search engine and television ads for a small direct-to-consumer company. We conducted a field experiment during a national television advertising campaign, randomly enabling and pausing the company's branded text (text-based links triggered by the brand name) and shopping ads (visual product listing ads) across different geographic regions. The results show that television ads generate more website visits when text ads and both text and shopping ads are enabled compared to when search ads are paused. We also find that television ads alone decrease the conversion rate, but enabling shopping ads attenuates this decrease. The results demonstrate that search and television ads interact, which is a necessary condition for a real-time syncing strategy to increase revenues. Because the interactions occur at different stages of the path to purchase, we run a revenue analysis to assess the implications for real-time syncing. The analysis indicates that a real-time syncing strategy would have likely increased the focal company's revenue compared with strategies that do not coordinate search and television ads.