Watch: An Ecommerce Brand’s Guide To TV Measurement

Quick gut check for every performance marketer. You can cite your social CAC by channel down to the penny. But do you know how much of last week's branded search came from your TV commercial that aired last month?

If the answer is "no," you're not alone. TV is one of the most underused channels in ecommerce marketing, and it's usually for one reason. The instant feedback you get from paid search and social doesn't exist in the same way on linear TV or even Connected TV.

At this year's CommerceNext Growth Show, Marketing Architects Chief Strategic Growth Officer Stacey Hawes sat down with GOVX Chief Brand Officer Aaron Pelander to make the case that TV measurement is a discipline any ecommerce brand can build. Because TV absolutely drives performance. But tracking that impact works differently than digital channels. TV works across the funnel, not just the bottom of it.

 

 

From performance marketing to full-funnel advertising

GOVX runs a members-only discount shopping site for the service community, including military, government, law enforcement, firefighters, teachers and nurses.

For years, GOVX operated like a classic performance marketer, focused on paid search and social. But like most brands, only a portion of GOVX’s total market is ready to buy at any given moment. This means people need a reason to think of GOVX when they’re finally ready to purchase, requiring investment in brand advertising.

TV advertising allows marketers to achieve both brand and sales goals. A 30-second TV commercial can tell a brand story with humor, emotion, and distinctiveness while driving new customers.

The challenge is proving that impact.

 

Measuring TV in the short-term

Stacey broke TV measurement into two timelines, starting with short-term results.

WARC reports that TV outperforms Facebook and YouTube video on sales impact, largely because a TV ad commands full-screen attention that a scrolling feed can’t. Research from Thinkbox found linear TV drives 21% of all same-week advertising profit, trailing only generic paid search and outpacing paid social. The difference shows up after that first week. Search and social's contribution to profit tends to fade fast, while TV's just getting started.

When used well, TV is an undeniable performance channel.

In the short term, brands can track this performance through leads, orders, call center volume, QR scans and website visits, then connect each signal back to when a specific commercial aired.

These numbers move fast, and they tell a brand what's working network by network, daypart by daypart. But none of these signals are meant to stand alone, either. Stacey recommends tracking CPM, reach, impressions, and sales on a weekly basis. This view becomes the foundation for broader performance analysis.

 

Measuring TV in the long-term

TV's biggest effects rarely show up in the first 24 hours. TVB's 2026 Purchase Funnel Study found TV is the most influential medium at every stage of the purchase funnel, ranking ahead of both social media and streaming video. Comcast reports that TV ads drive two times higher recall than mobile, but that lift often surfaces weeks or months later.

Stacey shared a real example. One Marketing Architects client saw branded search results jump 60% right after their commercial aired during a live sporting event. An attribution model would file that spike under organic search. It actually started weeks earlier with a TV ad.

Thinkbox calls this the “halo effect.” An econometric analysis of 10 brands found TV was responsible for 42% of all web visits, an uplift that held steady no matter how much a brand spent. The same research found digital channel performance gets a 14% lift whenever TV is on air, and the traffic TV sends skews toward branded search, which costs less than generic search and converts at a higher rate.

Isolating all of that from other channels takes more than one model. Brand lift studies measure awareness, recall, and purchase intent before and after someone sees an ad. Media mix modeling work backward from revenue to isolate exactly how much each channel is contributing. Some brands even run geo-based test-and-control markets to measure incremental revenue lift directly.

No single model tells the whole story. Stacey recommends tracking short-term results and media efficiency metrics weekly, layering in brand engagement signals after a few months, and running brand studies around the six-month mark. Finally, she tells marketers to watch market share and share of voice as you maintain investment over months and even years.

 

TV advertising performance for ecommerce brands

One year after partnering with Marketing Architects, GOVX's TV impressions tripled, and orders have climbed right alongside impressions. According to Aaron, TV is far from dead and still one of the more efficient ways to build reach.

Most ecommerce marketers already have the measurement discipline to prove out a hard channel. They just usually point it at paid search and paid social. Pointing that same discipline at TV, and tracking both the long and the short, is what turns a channel people avoid into one they can defend in a budget meeting.

Want more on how to measure TV’s full-funnel impact? Read Measuring the Long & the Short, a report covering the most helpful attribution models for TV.