Special Y! Ads Still Showing Up

I was just watching the morning news programs and happened to see an ad for Special K (the cereal), which at the end tells the viewer to go to Yahoo! and search for [special k] for more information. So, naturally my first impulse was to get back to the blogosphere and post.

Here are some comments from other bloggers about the ad campaign, which I'm dubbing "Special Y!".

Special K - special idea - Residual Media
Is Yahoo Selling Out? - Scott Hendison
Just What Kind of Ads are Running on Yahoo? - CenterNetworks

The biggest concern among these writers seems to be the fact that the ads that appear do not have the expected shaded box around them, so it doesn't follow Yahoo!'s usual method of displaying sponsored results. Therefore, the concern is that users are likely to not realize the ad is an ad.

However, my main interest would be to see if there is any research out there that shows the success (or failure) of the TV ad campaign in getting people to the web. It's interesting - usually, TV ad campaigns have 1 goal - get people to buy the product. With this one, we still have that goal as the primary one, but we also have another one in the effort to get Special K's people to Yahoo!'s website.

I would really like to see some research showing traffic increases or decreases after the placement of this tv ad. Do traditional media advertisements have the ability to get people to use new media, search, social media, etc?