Your apparel company just launched its first TV campaign, and new customers driven by TV surge. That's expected. TV is a powerful response channel.
But something far less expected also happens. Paid search campaigns grow more effective, social engagement rises, and even in-store visits increase.
This is a real scenario that plays out time and again for TV advertisers, thanks to a phenomenon known as the halo effect.
Even as consumers spread their attention across countless services and devices, TV remains a resilient powerhouse for driving both brand and sales results. But its impact extends beyond capturing viewers during a commercial break. It also boosts the effectiveness of every other channel in the marketing mix.
TV and digital advertising are a perfect match.
The halo effect occurs any time one marketing channel positively influences the performance of another, but the relationship between TV and digital is especially strong. Combining TV's broad reach and emotional storytelling with digital's precise targeting creates a marketing duo that improves:
Performance. TV makes digital work harder. A 2026 econometric analysis of ten brands by Thinkbox found that when TV is on air, digital channel performance lifts by an average of 13.7%, with social climbing 15.4%, generic paid search 13.1%, and brand paid search 12.7%. That research comes out of the U.K., so treat the exact numbers as directional for U.S. campaigns, but the pattern holds up across markets.
Brand Recall. Comcast Advertising's 2026 “TV Makes Memories” study, conducted with MediaScience, found that brand recall rises 8.7 times when TV is paired with search, 1.8 times when paired with social media, and 1.6 times when paired with podcasts, compared to running those channels alone.
Purchase Intent. Comcast Advertising also found that ads seen in a TV environment drive 1.3 times higher purchase intent than the same ad on mobile, and that sequencing a TV ad before a digital one beats two digital ads back to back.
Digital Ad Perception. Digital ads are viewed as less intrusive when a TV ad was seen first, leading to a 12% lift in brand attitude, per Effectv's Halo Effect research.
That gap between what TV actually does and what gets credit for it is bigger than most marketers assume. In a report we published with WARC, attribution models credit search with nearly three times its real impact, while undercounting TV's contribution by 90%.
TV improves performance across your marketing mix.
Of course, digital isn’t the only type of marketing to benefit from the addition of TV to your marketing mix. Traditional channels also experience a performance boost.
Out of Home. Billboards, transit ads, and other out-of-home advertising gains relevance and recall when viewers are also exposed to TV commercials, leading to a 22% increase in campaign effectiveness. Another study from Clear Channel Outdoor and Kantar found OOH also delivers a 13.3% lift in ad awareness compared to digital, TV, and CTV on its own, and matches linear TV's impact on brand favorability and purchase intent.
Radio. Campaigns that include both TV and radio advertising see a 31% boost in effectiveness.
Print. Print media, including newspapers and magazines, benefit from a 31% increase in effectiveness when paired with TV.
Cinema. TV’s influence on cinema advertising is particularly striking, with a 54% increase in performance.
Direct Mail. Direct mail campaigns see a 20% improvement in performance when supported by TV advertising since TV’s impact on brand recognition and trust can make offers more compelling when they arrive in consumers’ mailboxes.
Marketing Architects clients have felt this firsthand in their marketing mix firsthand. An education provider saw affiliate marketing and paid search improve. An insurance provider felt the impact on direct mail campaigns. And an online retailer saw website and app sessions rise, along with improvements in both paid and branded search. One financial services company discovered TV increased leads from other channels up to 12%. Accounting for these additional TV-driven leads, their campaign delivered a 400% ROI.
There’s something special about TV.
TV isn’t the only channel with a halo effect. But it does have an outsized impact when paired with almost every other marketing channel. And the most missed potential when it’s not included.
TVB's Purchase Funnel Study, based on 4,000 consumer interviews across six categories, found that 42% of consumers named linear TV their single most important influence on product awareness. That's more than four times social media's 9% and seven times non-TV streaming video's 6%. No other channel came close.
According to Kantar and ThinkTV, removing TV from a multi-channel campaign could reduce its impact by a whopping 39%. Based on Kantar’s analysis, the top five channel combinations for the greatest top-of-funnel results are:
TV and out-of-home
TV and video
TV and social
TV and display
Social and video
You may’ve noticed TV figures in dramatically. Plus, the top three combinations including TV deliver 67% more change to awareness levels than the top three combinations without. Top-performing bottom-of-funnel combinations also lean toward TV.
TV and social
Video and out-of-home
TV and video
Social and video
TV and display
How to measure TV's impact beyond direct response.
TV's influence extends far beyond immediate response to a commercial. To fully understand the channel’s impact, marketers need to evolve their measurement strategies to account for TV’s micro, macro and business effects. Start by considering:
Cross-channel attribution. Track how TV exposure influences engagement and performance across other channels. Building this into your measurement plan from the start helps make sure you don't miss TV's impact elsewhere in the mix.
Incrementality testing. Isolate TV's unique contribution to overall marketing performance by setting a baseline for typical performance across your marketing mix before launching TV, then comparing it to performance after your campaign goes live.
A local heavy-up test. If you're already advertising on TV, or want to prove its impact on a small scale before going all-in, a local heavy-up test using test and control markets gives you one of the clearest looks at the channel's role.
As the TV industry keeps changing, across both linear and streaming, understanding the halo effect matters more, not less, for making informed marketing decisions. TV does something no other channel does: it makes every other channel in the mix work harder.
Learn more about evaluating TV’s full impact.
Access our measurement report here to ensure you're capturing all of TV's contributions to your marketing performance.