The next time you’re watching live TV, pay attention to the ending of commercials. What you’ll find are an increasing number of them tagged with a URL, or even better, a URL with voice-over to go online. This is certainly not new news as it was estimated that during the 2008 Super Bowl, 64% of commercials included a website address.

But why not 100%? One of the most common reasons I’ve heard is:

“We want to drive people in-store. We don’t want to confuse the message by driving them to the web.”

Yet, consider the fact that:

• You can only do so much within a 30-second TV spot
• Neilsen recently reported that 28% of the time people are online at home they’re also watching TV
• According to Forrester, initiating an online search is the most common response to an offline ad
• 95% of the 2009 Super Bowl ads had some kind of online presence
• Hundreds of thousands of TV commercials are watched and shared on YouTube

Since it is unlikely that, upon seeing a TV spot, a viewer will immediately get up off their couch and head into the respective store/restaurant/business to make a purchase, why not harness the momentum of their piqued interest and reinforce their consideration?

Television and the web will only continue to converge:

• TiVo now enables you to order pizza from live Dominos Pizza TV spots
• Verizon Fios is integrating Facebook and Twitter updates into their program interface
• Cablevison is piloting a series of interactive TV display ads to order samples
• IBM is developing a TV remote control that integrates with Twitter

Driving to the web from TV can only amplify your message and, if done well, marry TV and web in a way that’s greater than the sum of their individual parts. It’s the 1+1=3 media effect in action.

As for the future? If the Vitamin Water TV spot featuring Kobe Bryant vs. Lebron James is any indication, brands will start to favor directing TV viewers to their social media properties over their corporate websites.

Mike edited and adapted this post from his original blog post on Harmonic Aftershock. Image source: iStockphoto.com