Add Mobile Tags to TV Ads

TV Ad makers have long struggled to calculate their ad’s conversion rate. Despite the fact that TV constitutes the majority of the marketing budget, its success rate can only be calculated based on hypothesis.

However, companies such as HTC and PepsiCo are trying to use mobile apps to track the performance of their TV ads.

In June, HTC launched a new campaign in collaboration with Google’s Goggles app in order to promote the new HTC Sensation 4G smartphone. The campaign is running across various channels including TV, print and HTC has deployed mobile content specific to each channel.

So, this is how the campaign goes. You are seen a preview of the ad. Customers who scan the ad using the Google app can view an extended version of a video featured in the ad. To promote it further in the social media, customers also have an option of connecting to their Facebook account and sharing it with their friends.

This way, HTC can measure how many viewers scanned the ad, how many connected via Facebook, how many shared the video and lot more other metrics.

Earlier companies used to measure their TV ad performance by measuring the sales volume in the regions where the ad was broadcast. But imagine how tough it would be to measure the performance in case of ads that are shown nationwide, or worldwide.

With mobile tagging, the brands can measure their ad performance with more depth and insight and use the data to improve their ad performance, not to mention the increase in the ROI with the integration of all the channels with a mobile app.

Moreover, if you calculate the cost, then mobile delivery method is not a significant investment compared to other coupon methods such as print.

Such apps have definitely opened doors for more apps, and bigger markets for the mobile developers. I’m sure that in near future, this strategy would be adopted by many companies especially the ones dealing with coupons and promotions on consumer goods. Consumers no longer have to note down the promotion codes on paper, or cut sunday newspaper clippings. All they need to do is scan the ad, and redeem the coupon at the retail store via their mobile.

Though it can get challenging for a consumer to recognize a TV spot’s mobile delivery capability and then launch the corresponding mobile app within 30 second time frame, but I suppose with time, this shortcoming will also be achieved.