Does online campaign ad exposure influence information-seeking behavior? Case study from evaluation of Tobacco Free Florida's anti-smoking campaign

Background: There are currently no standards in measuring exposure to and impact of online health campaign advertisements. Ad click-through rates are limited because few Internet users ever click on display ads and self-reported awareness of online ads via surveys are subject to recall bias. We examined the potential of using web behavior data that are unobtrusively collected from online panelists to determine whether online ad exposure influences information-seeking behavior.

Method: Using data from comScore's Internet panel, we identified Florida adults who were exposed (N=5200) and not-exposed (N=5200) to the Tobacco Free Florida (TFF) online campaign ads. Panelists were identified as exposed if at least one the TFF campaign ad tags appeared in their web visitation data. The unexposed group was matched to the exposed group on demographics and Internet use. We assessed whether exposed panelists were more likely to visit the campaign websites and search for campaign-related topics (e.g. quit smoking) than the unexposed panelists.

Results: Visits to campaign web site increased up to 4 weeks post ad exposure among the exposed group, but overall, the proportion visiting websites was low among the exposed and unexposed groups. The exposed group was significantly more likely than the unexposed group to visit the campaign web site, but ad exposure had no influence on searching for campaign-related topics post exposure.

Conclusion: These results suggest that online panel web behavior data may be useful for examining exposure to and behavioral response to online campaign ads.