A survey conducted by Accenture has identified that a third of Americans have used social media as a result of TV adverts.  This has definitely surprised us to say the least.

1000 viewers across a variety of demographics were polled to find how efficient the recent trend of tying in a promotion to company social media pages on television ads (usually involving adding the Facebook 'like' symbol, Twitter Hashtags, QR codes or Shazam symbols) really were.  Off the back of seeing adverts of this variety, 20% of viewers 'liked' the particular program on Facebook, 11% scanned a QR code, 7% searched the Twitter hashtag, and 5% launched Shazam to identify a song in the ad.  

While we understand the trend in social media's implementation into other media forms for promotion, and the Hashtag and 'Like' options are very credible ideas, the fact that roughly 110 people actually felt compelled to get up to the TV and scan a QR code has caught us skeptics of the technology rather off guard.

When viewers were asked why they made the jump to social media from the TV ad, 43% said they were looking for additional information about the show, 26% were on the hunt for additional video content or pro-active interaction with the show, and a majority of the audience were looking for deals and competitions (32% searching for coupons, 31% entering a contest).  

The most impressive statistic to us, however, was that 16% had taken to social media to buy something, proving how the degrees of separation between ad and purchase have reduced dramatically.

Almost 75% of the polled viewers said that the experience on social media met the expectations drawn up by the advertisement, and only a tenth said it fell short.

With statistics like this, and the internationally growing social trend (never mind just America) of connectivity while watching TV, it begins to make sense that companies are jumping on this bandwagon to interact on a more direct basis with their audience garnered from the extremely expensive television campaigns of today.  And with it still being a relatively new concept to some, expectations still haven't been accurately defined, probably explaining the huge percentage of satisfaction.

Source: Marketwatch (Accenture)