Why should TV ads send people online? 

There are a number of reasons, a very important one being the growth of second screening

Ericsson ConsumerLab stats found that, out of 15,000 people surveyed, 75% use mobile devices at the same time as they watch TV.

Nielsen discovered a similar trend, with eight out of 10 global mobile users similarly multitasking when watching TV. 

Essentially, viewers of TV ads have the perfect response mechanism in their hands or close by, be it a smartphone, tablet or laptop.

If they like a product, they can instantly search for it online, and marketers need to be aware of this and build the strategy around it. 

This calls for a multichannel approach. Anticipate what users will search for and make sure that the SEO groundwork has been done. If the term is hard to rank for, then use PPC.

The Admiral ad

Here’s the ad, nothing groundbreaking from a creative point of view, but it does the job well.  

What caught my attention was the use of a search call to action - a prompt for viewers to use a specific search term to respond to the ad. 

It comes up towards the end of the ad, and remains on the screen for long enough for viewers to notice, unlike many displays of URLs on ads. 

The search results

So, if you search for ‘Admiral discount’, what do you get? 

Admiral totally owns the search results for this term. So, if users take the prompt then there’s no way they can’t find the correct site. 

You can see why Admiral has done this. Plenty of competitors are bidding on the term ‘multicar’ – the product featured in the ad. 

So, if you search for multicar, or even ‘Admiral multicar’, you’ll see competitors’ ads. 

Landing pages

The landing page, or homepage in this case, has been thought through too. The characters from the TV ad are shown prominently, which tells the visitor that they’re in the right place. 

The discount theme is continued too, with text showing the savings which can be made, while a prominent calls to action invite visitors to search or call for a quote. 

All in all, it’s a well joined-up strategy from Admiral.