Harvard Professor Suggests Super Bowl Ads for Multitaskers
In the age of portable technology, TV viewers often surf the web on a cell phone or laptop while simultaneously watching TV. In 2012, a Nielsen survey revealed that roughly 40 percent of tablet and smartphone users use their devices while watching TV on a daily basis.
Two years ago, 60 percent of football fans reported that they planned to use a smartphone, tablet, or laptop while watching the Super Bowl. 13 percent of respondents said that they would do so during the game, while the rest planned to use other forms of technology during commercial breaks. This survey is particularly worrying for advertisers, who paid an average of $4 million dollars per 30 second Super Bowl ad during the 2013 game.
“Advertisers are paying based on the audience watching a program,” says Thales S. Teixeira, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School. “If people stop paying attention en masse, they are not getting everyone they are paying for.”
However, Teixeira says that advertisers should see the multitasking trend as an opportunity as well as a challenge. If viewers have their laptop or cellphone nearby, a TV ad could lead them to make a quick online purchase while watching the game. Teixeira and co-authors Jura Liaukonyte of Cornell University and Kenneth C. Wilbur of the University of California, San Diego have written a working paper called “How TV Ads Trigger Online Shopping” about how advertisers can use viewer multitasking to their advantage. The paper considers when viewers are likely to purchase something they saw on television, but also what types of ads encourage them to purchase products and services online.
The researchers used two databases to study viewer behavior. One database from Kantar collects data from television monitoring boxes to analyze what volunteers watch while at home, including commercials. Another from comScore analyzes what users do online, including how long they stay on certain websites and what they purchase from e-commerce sites. The databases allowed researchers to analyze how particular ads affected the number of visits to the advertisers’ websites, and the number of purchases that people made on the websites.
The researchers divided the ads into four main types. Action-focused ads, which encourage viewers to take action by offering sales, special deals, and incentives to shop, increased visits to advertiser’s websites, but did not increase the number of purchases per visitor. Product- and emotion- focused ads, which give people reasons to buy a particular product or encourage people to form attachments to a brand, increased the number of purchases made by people who were already visiting the advertiser’s site.
Intriguingly, the study found that imagery-focused ads, the sweeping works of advertising that are mainstays of the Super Bowl, actually reduce sales. Big showstoppers lead to fewer website visitors and fewer sales, potentially because people are so enthralled by the ad that they don’t switch to using other forms of technology.
The Super Bowl has always been a competition between advertisers as well as a competition between football teams. Teixeira’s paper can show retailers how to remain competitive by adapting to new technology and viewer habits.
