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11/16/2006: "Should You Be Advertising on Television or is DRTV Dead?"

Some people have said that television advertising is dead. Well, it's not. In fact, it's more popular now than ever. It's just used somewhat differently. Are you taking advantage of direct response television advertising? If not, perhaps you should reconsider.

With a new year fast approaching, you need to be planning your advertising and marketing programs. Perhaps television should be among your advertising vehicles.

Despite video games, iPods, online gaming, long cell phone calls, text messages and other diversions, that old boob tube is still very popular and is still used daily by most people. If you look at the research, you'll see that in fact it's more popular now than ever. Just in a different way.

According to Nielsen Media Research, U.S. TV viewership was up nearly 3 percent from the previous year and 12.5 percent from a decade ago. Cable Advertising Bureau data show that weekly viewing per cable household is up 69 percent in the last 10 years.

Does that necessarily mean folks are watching our television spots? Not necessarily. Some recent industry studies show and that ad-skipping is not ubiquitous by the folks with digital video recorders (DVR). In fact, if the ads are well written and presented, there’s interaction by the viewers.

A recent study showed the impact of enhancing certain clients’ spots with a branded “thumbs-up” clickable icon visible only to TiVo subscribers. Did the viewers just skip through the commercial like most folks think they would? No. A large number actually clicked on the icon and then asked to be contacted. Rather impressive don't you think?

The response generated here was 13 to 23 times higher than the benchmark cable TV campaigns.

Measuring Results

For decades, consumers have proven they'll interact with television by calling the toll-free number prominent in all commercials. We’ve used those responses to calculate a highly granular return on investment (ROI) for each spot aired and to use that feedback to optimize the DRTV plan.

But today, we understand the consumer and his or her likes and dislikes are changing so we promote the use of a URL as a response mechanism and we factor in Web responses to our ROI calculations.

Many of the networks also offer direct response rates for commercials – including 30 seconds – that feature a URL exclusively. Most spots that use a URL in their spot see a large increase in response. The same holds true in all direct response marketing today.

In addition, if you work with a company such as Hawthorne Direct, you'll get stats on what your spot or infomercial is doing. You can quickly make any necessary changes. So accountability of television advertising can be scientific and will allow you to know what you are getting for your ad dollar.

Keys to effective DRTV

According to a recent article written By Paul Soltoff, SendTec Inc. in DM News, there are numerous ways to measure the results you get from your television advertising.

. Multiple offers – test three, four, five or even more offers.
· Different marketing communication messages – for each offer.
· Different in-bound and/or out-bound telemarketing centers and scripts
· Different online landing pages, including design and copy
· Sufficient media across a wide range of networks and broadcast stations
· Measure the lift on other channels that is driven by DRTV
· Selling processes like out-bound to convert leads to sales
· Adding more upsells, both on the telemarketing side and the Web

So should you be advertising on television? Many very small businesses can't even though they would perhaps benefit from it. But most medium and large companies should certainly consider it. People have long enjoyed interacting with advertising. Infomercials have been and still are tremendously hot and they sell a lot of product if done right. So do television spots. The key is to write the spot well. Put a URL in and make the spot interactive. That's the real key.