Online brands increase TV ad investment by £170 million in five years

Investment in TV advertising by online brands has grown by £170 million in the past five years, with average annual growth of 172%.

The figures, from research carried out by Nielsen Media Research for Thinkbox, show that TV advertising now accounts for 71.5% of online brands’ measured advertising investment.

In 2004, the 34 online brands advertising on TV spent less than £10 million, with this figure increasing to over £180 million last year, with a total of 239 online brands now advertising on TV, said Thinkbox.

The growth underlines online brands’ first hand experience of TV advertising’s ability to create online traffic, added Thinkbox, with the research finding that 94% of the UK claims to have gone online as a direct result of watching TV in the last 12 months.

David Brennan, Thinkbox research and strategy director, said: “Online brands see the effect of TV advertising on their business immediately. They see that it works, so they have raised investment. They are voting with their budgets.

“Some of the most memorable and effective TV campaigns of the last year have been created by online brands. It is further proof of TV’s healthy commercial relationship with the internet. TV drives online response better than any other media channel.”

Rhys McLachlan, managing partner of implementation and futures investment at MediaCom, said: “TV remains unparalleled in its ability to build brands and drive brand equity and affinity. Time and time again this premier position is challenged by pretenders to the throne, but TV has proven itself to be astonishingly resilient. Web brands inevitably harness its unique brand-building power to help establish their own brand equity, with even the most famous of all web brands, Google, turning to TV recently.”

Thinkbox also found that 54% of the broadband-enabled population claim to watch TV concurrently with being online every day.