An interesting iProspect white paper looks at how many users are searching for brands and companies that they first learned about offline.
The panel of respondents in the US were asked which offline activity over the past 6 months had prompted them to conduct an online search. The question set only asks about advertising rather than editorial - even so, 37% of search users had been driven to search by television commercials, and 36% by word of mouth from a friend or acquaintance. Magazine / newspaper advertising had influenced 30% of respondents.
The impact of offline is even more marked on 'frequent searchers' - people searching at least once a day on average. For these frequent searchers, 44% had searched after seeing a TV ad, 41% after a recommendation from a friend and 35% after seeing a press or magazine ad.
Most resulting searches were for a company or product name - supporting the findings of the Atlas Institute research on navigational search.
hmmm...we've got to beat the 'adsense tsunami'