Do TV ads really prompt consumers to buy products? That’s the perennial question for marketers. NYC-HQ’d Publicis Groupe’s MediaVest believes the answer will emerge from a project it’s just undertaken with an American media market research company.

TRA’s new technology matches the advertising households receive with the products that are ultimately bought by members of those households. Explains Jen Soch, VP activation director for advanced TV at MediaVest, ‘This is the first time we’ve had ultimate ROI accountability.’

Greg Ramsay, research manager at MediaVest Canada, tells MiC the potential payoff is enormous, saying the project’s ‘ability to measure TV’s ROI is light years ahead of traditional methods like market mix modeling.

‘At the moment,’ he adds, ‘the data is only available for Southern California, although I think we’ll see it expanded across the rest of the United States quite soon. There are no plans to roll it out in Canada yet, but I think we’ll get tremendous value from the learnings that MediaVest USA will be sharing with us.’

TRA’s new technology focuses on granular information to create ROI reports for media spending, gathering data from set-top boxes data in 300,000 homes. Simultaneously, Experian Marketing Solutions will compile demographic information via purchase data from shopper cards such as loyalty cards. Then the dots will be connected between ad stimulus and shopping behaviour.

‘For 50 years, TV has been bought on sex and age demographics,’ explains TRA CEO Mark Lieberman. ‘What we are saying is, ‘Why not buy based on purchases?”