Is there cross-media synergy?
When you run a multi-media, “360” campaign, do some media boost other channels? And how much?
Thinkbox did a big study to figure some of this out. 50 brands in 6 categories (auto, ecomm, finance, FMCG, retail, & travel). 11 different media. 3 years of data. £1.4Bn in ad spend. Not too shabby.
Via the magic of econometric modeling, they found that, sure enough, media do have a multiplicative effect on each other. On average, one medium boosts the efficiency of ad spend in another by about 8%. So woop woop to multi-channel campaigns!
TV is king, boosting others from 8% for search to a whopping 54% for cinema. (Watch for the post-pandemic cinema comeback!) Why? Something to do with storytelling, memory encoding, sounds, emotions, etc. Oh — and you can’t scroll past the ad. That helps.
By contrast, social media only boosts other media from 1%–3%. Why? Something to do with your thumb speed. Maybe. And dinky screens. And maybe creative quality? Just a hunch....
Caveats aplenty, of course. Even figuring out cause & effect is tricky with so many variables & time lags & whatnot.
And Mandy Rice-Davies applies too (“Thinkbox is the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK,” after all).
But totally worth reading: https://www.thinkbox.tv/research/thinkbox-research/demand-generation/