Does Digital Ad Exposure Influence Information-Seeking Behavior Online? Evidence From the CDC “Tips From Former Smokers” National Tobacco Education Campaign

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Measuring the impact of online health campaigns is challenging. Ad click through rates (CTRs) are traditionally used to measure the impact of campaign ad exposure, but they are limited because only a small fraction of Internet users ever click on ads.  Furthermore, there may be latency effects whereby people do not click on ads at the time of exposure but visit the promoted Web site or conduct searches on campaign-related topics at a later time.  Online panels that unobtrusively collect panelists’ Web behavior data and can link ad exposure to web site visits and searches may be a more reliable method for assessing the impact of digital ad exposure.  From March to June 2012, CDC aired the national “Tips from Former Smokers” media campaign designed to encourage current smokers to quit.  Advertisements ran across media channels and the digital ads directed users who clicked on the ads to the Tips campaign website.  We used comScore’s Internet panel to assess whether exposure to Tips ads influenced information-seeking behavior.

Methods: comScore mined its panelists’ Web behavior data for unique codes that would indicate exposure to Tips ads, regardless of whether the ads were clicked or not.  A total of 15,319 U.S. adults were identified as having been “exposed” to a Tips campaign ad. An equal number of “unexposed” adults (N=15,319) was identified matched on demographics and Internet use behavior to the exposed group.  Panelists’ Web behavior data was mined for up to 4 weeks post initial Tips ad exposure to determine whether they visited the Tip scampaign website, other cessation related websites (e.g. nicotine replacement therapy site), and conducted searches for campaign related topics (e.g. “quit smoking”).

Results: The proportion of exposed adults visiting the Tips sites increased from 0.42% in Week 1 to 0.91% at 4 weeks post ad exposure, and these rates were significantly higher than the unexposed group (p<0.05).  Few adults visited other cessation-related websites with no significant difference between the exposed and unexposed groups.  The exposed group was significantly more likely than the unexposed group to conduct searches for campaign-related topics post ad exposure (p<0.05), with rates of searches increasing from 0.20% in Week 1 to 0.67% in Week 4.

Conclusions: These results suggest that online ad exposure is associated with confirmed visits to campaign website and searches for campaign related topics and that these information-seeking behaviors occur up to several weeks post ad exposure.   Web behavior data from online panels may be useful for examining exposure and behavioral responses to digital campaign ads.

Implications for research and/or practice: Digital advertising is a potentially powerful tool for motivating audience’s information seeking around behaviors that are targeted in campaign messages.