TV Ads Go Better With Hashtags? Twitter Says So

As Twitter gets set for its first earnings announcement later today, the company continues its full court press for ad dollars with claims today that television ads go better with Twitter.

The company shared details from three separate studies — all commissioned by Twitter — that look at the relationship between TV ads and Twitter users/activity.

The primary findings from each study:

• Using hashtags in TV commercials drives positive brand conversation. One study found that TV ads with hashtags had 42% more Tweets about the ads than those without hashtags.
• Twitter users are less likely to change channels during commercials. In a different study, only eight percent of Twitter users tune away from TV ads, compared to 17 percent of TV watchers that aren’t on Twitter.
• Twitter users are more likely to remember TV commercials. In the third study, Twitter users had a 53 percent recall of TV ads, compared to 40 percent for non-Twitter users.

Twitter knows that it’s the default “second screen” for TV viewers, but it’s also aware that Facebook is trying to push its way into the game, too, with things like the recent addition of trending topics on the web and videos ads in the News Feed. Look for more studies like this where Twitter aims to show advertisers — TV and otherwise — where it thinks the real value is in social advertising.