Regardless of the medium, offline advertising is driving consumers online, according to a recent survey by JupiterResearch. More shoppers are responding to television, radio, print and other offline advertisements by visiting the advertisers' websites from computers and mobile phones, rather than calling the phone number in the ads.

Two-thirds of consumers responding to an offline advertisement visited the website of the company advertised or a search engine to learn more, while just 14 percent called a phone number from the advertisement, the survey said.

"Measurement of consumer response online sparked by offline advertising initiatives is a key variable to understand as advertising dollars migrate to online media forms," the JupiterResearch report said. "Understanding the role offline advertising dollars have on online campaign results is paramount to overall budget and marketing planning," it concluded.

Following are additional findings from the survey:

• 62 percent of catalog recipients who place orders place them online, versus 27 percent who call the number featured in the catalog.
• TV and print ads are the most likely offline formats to drive online search response at 70 and 57 percent of survey respondents, respectively. This compares with 32 percent for radio and 27 percent for direct mail.
• Mobile technology is enabling consumers to react more to offline ads that are outside the home, with 66 percent of those surveyed conducting searches on their mobile devices in response to a magazine or newspaper ad.
• Still, 82 percent of searches inspired by offline advertising were conducted from home computers.
• Women who search online in response to offline ads are more inclined to purchase the product online, while men are more inclined to conduct further research.

The survey of 2,460 U.S. online shoppers was commissioned by SendTec Inc., an online marketing firm. It was recently announced that JupiterResearch is being acquired by Forrester Research.