Smart TV advertising and TV advertising: a new dream team?
Smart TVs combine the TV viewing experience with the Internet. It’s a combination that’s catching on and that more and more consumers are coming to appreciate. However, there is still relatively little research available on how specialized smart TV advertising works in combination with traditional TV advertising.
Market researchers from Nielsen were therefore commissioned by LG and YuMe to analyze the impact of smart TV advertising formats in addition to general smart TV usage with the help of an experiment. 100 US consumers were presented with a classic TV program including advertising in the laboratory. Half of the test subjects were then given the opportunity to use a smart TV on which special smart TV advertising formats were also shown. Following this laboratory experiment, all study participants were asked about the advertising effect by telephone.
The key finding of the study: the combination of TV commercials and smart TV ads generates a strong advertising impact. The Ad Impact Index - which summarizes six individual impact indicators - is 114 in the smart TV user group (basis: TV-only group = 100). A closer look at the individual smart TV advertising formats shows that PIP advertising (picture-in-picture) as a TV supplement achieves the greatest effect (123), followed by portal banners (104). An even greater advertising impact is achieved when all smart TV advertising formats are combined with traditional TV advertising (134). In detail, 58% of smart TV users were able to remember the advertising under these conditions (TV only: 56%). Brand recall was 94% (TV only: 76%), 58% could remember the central advertising message (TV only: 38%), and 64% liked the advertising (TV only: 50%). The combination of traditional TV commercials and smart TV advertising also led to a higher purchase intention (50% vs. 30%) and a higher willingness to recommend (52% vs. 30%).
In a second part of the study, 400 smart TV users were also asked about smart TV advertising and usage. The survey shows that many smart TV users have already clicked on smart TV ads (56%). In order to exploit the interaction potential, smart TV ads should be interesting (67%), informative (63%) and relevant (59%) - because this is exactly when they are clicked on. The example of a video banner shows that smart TV advertising can have a clear call to action: 68% of those who clicked on a smart TV video banner subsequently looked further into the advertised product - e.g. searched for additional information online (17%), considered buying it (23%) or even purchased the product directly (13%).
The results on smart TV usage show that 90% are satisfied with their device and 81% prefer their smart TV to a normal TV. Particularly popular among smart TV users are accessing free Internet videos (61% at least once a week), surfing on the TV set (60%) and accessing paid video content (50%). Like traditional televisions, smart TVs are also a family fixture. 87% of devices are located in the living room and 64% of users usually watch TV with family or friends on their smart TV. The study also shows that smart TV users tend to be younger (42% under the age of 40) and have a high income (35% have an annual household income of more than 120,000 US dollars). Four user groups can be distinguished: 22% can be classified as affluent tech-savvy, 25% as social youngsters, 35% as family-oriented and 19% as traditional.
Clemens Koob
