The modern experience of watching a television screen is intrinsically tied to using a second screen as well -- the screen of a smartphone. In fact, 84% of smartphone and tablet users say they use their devices while watching TV, and over one million people in the United States turn to Twitter as their second screen companion.

Twitter has done several studies with Nielsen this year that show that people who second screen with Twitter while watching TV pay more attention to the advertisements on TV, and have a 157% higher brand favorability (7% versus 18%) and a 88% higher purchase intent (16 to 30%). This indicates that, as Nielsen stated, “Agencies and advertisers can look to Twitter TV metrics as a part of the media planning and buying process to identify shows with engaged audiences and, by extension, opportunities to increase ad memorability and sales outcomes.”

At Salesforce, we wanted to know if brands use the same messages in Twitter ads and TV ads at the same time if it would produce better results than with either channel separately. To do this, we took all TV and Twitter ads run by a top US insurance company and a top beverage company and analyzed if advertising on both Twitter and TV simultaneously provides a greater lift than either channel on its own.

Salesforce examined every single Twitter ad run for both brands in the month of December 2014 and compared the number of TV ads run in the United States for the same hour as each of the Tweets. This included over 100 million impressions on Twitter and thousands of TV spots.  

The answer was yes: there was a moderate positive correlation for TV sync for Twitter ad CTR for both brands.

We recommend that you consider coordinating your TV and Twitter advertising spend, in order to improve the results over running both channels independently. You can align your call to action, such as a call from an agent or entering a promotion, on both channels, and work across channel to ensure that you have the same brand messaging. Make sure to measure results across both channels as well, so that you can properly evaluate success.

To learn more about the study and the results of aligning your TV and Twitter ad spend, download our full study: Coordinating TV and Twitter Campaigns.