Project Rushmore 2013 Report
Significant Highlights
What is Project Rushmore 2013 Report?
This study is a special examination of the relationship between out-of-home advertising and the Internet; specifically, the ability of out-of-home media to drive online search, website visits and social media activity.
Part I: National Survey
- Out-of-home media delivers more online activity per ad dollar spent compared to television, radio and print (newspapers and magazines). The online activations including search, Facebook and Twitter activity generated by out-of-home advertising indexes at nearly three times the rate we would expect given its relative ad spend. For example, outdoor media accounts for 17% of gross search activations generated by television, radio, print and out-of-home combined but it only accounts for 6% of the total combined advertising spend.
Part II: Rushmore Vote Campaign Results
- Well over half the visitors to RUSHMOREVOTE.COM accessed the website using a mobile device; 57% of site visitors used a mobile web browser on a smartphone or tablet to vote for the next face on Mount Rushmore.
- The Rushmore Vote campaign went viral. Nearly two-thirds of those who visited the polling website lived outside the four metro areas participating in the out-of-home advertising campaign.
- People living in the markets where they had an opportunity to see the Rushmore Vote ads were nearly three times as likely to use a search engine to find the polling site. Roughly one-third of website visitors in the four test markets found the site using unpaid search compared to only 13% of those in the rest of the country.
- Facebook alone accounted for nearly 1 in 10 visitors to RUSHMOREVOTE.COM. Over one-third of website visitors arrived using links from another sites including blogs and social networks. Facebook was the top social media draw accounting for 9% of total site visitors. Close to 7,000 Facebook users saw content related to Rushmore Vote, even if they didn't go to the official website to vote; content was viewed either by personally visiting the fan page or seeing it in a friend's newsfeed.
- Even people who learned about the vote online still knew the campaign originated on billboards. Website visitors were asked where they learned about the Rushmore poll. Even though only 38% of visitors lived in a metro participating in the out-of-home ad schedule, three-quarters of website visitors (75%) credit roadside billboards or bus shelters for starting the campaign.