Does activity on website and social networking sites increase in response to television and online campaign ads? Results from the Tobacco Free Florida anti-smoking campaign

Mass media campaigns are effective at encouraging smoking cessation and preventing smoking initiation. To date, most campaigns have been disseminated via television and radio advertisements, but increasingly organizations are incorporating online ads, campaign website, and campaign pages on social networking sites to extend the reach of messages. In our evaluation of Tobacco Free Florida's (TFF) cessation campaign, we examined the impact of TV and online advertisements in driving visits to TFF campaign website, facebook page, twitter handle, and youtube page. Trends in weekly data from January to December 2011 for the following sources will be reported: 1) TRPs for TV and radio ads; impressions delivered for online ads; 2) number of visits to campaign websites (TobaccoFreeFlorida.com, FloridaQuitline.com); 3) number of fans/likes and number of updates/comments posted on TFF Facebook profile page; 4) number of followers and number of tweets on TFF twitter profile; and 5) number of video views and subscribers on TFF YouTube channel. We will conduct linear trend and correlational analyses to determine whether patterns in website and social media activity increased over time and were associated with TV/radio and online media buys. Results will help inform research on evaluating the impact of web/social media campaigns as well as implementation of online media campaigns.