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The direct response TV (DRTV) advertising industry has always prided itself on its ability to convey the absolute return on investment for all media costs. This hardest of all marketing metrics has made DRTV in many ways the ultimate arbiter of success or failure for all TV broadcast marketing. In the DRTV industry you cannot hide behind the softer target of simply ‘brand building’ as it’s ultimately about sales and generating profit. Consumer behaviour, and not so recent developments in online technology, has now made the job of tracking sales of either physical products or services from DRTV advertising much more challenging. Roll back a mere fifteen years and 90% of all sales from any DRTV advertising campaign for either short or long form infomercials were generated by 0800 telephone numbers featured on screen. The more adventurous consumers would occasionally in the early 2000’s venture onto ‘the internet’ to make purchases driven by DRTV, but there was still a general reluctance to trust the concept of parting with credit card details to make purchases via transactional websites. But this has all, of course, changed within a generation…. Welcome then to 2015 where many DRTV advertisers, especially in the services sector, have simply dispensed with using telephone numbers for DRTV as response mechanisms at all in their TV marketing. With a universal trust in online purchasing coupled with vast improvements in ‘search’ based web marketing the amount of consumers responding via the phone to DRTV advertising is circa 25% of the total. So the challenge has therefore moved to tracking DRTV sales and the inherent need for sophisticated attribution via online analytics to determine the efficacy of any given campaign. The good news is that DRTV is certainly still a viable proposition with the right creative and media for any client, but any advertiser needs to be aware that analytics are key to now to enable a successful DRTV campaign to be measured and optimised.

Successful DRTV advertising has always been about marketing products and services for the lowest possible costs, especially where DRTV airtime is concerned. Any seasoned DRTV practitioner will always be far more interested, from a commercial perspective, in the low cost per thousand (CPT) of any airtime rather than the demographic details or specific ‘targeting’ of consumers – the very cornerstones of brand advertising. In addition, contrary to all theoretic strategies based on ‘brand building’, the best and most responsive DRTV adverts will create a profitable direct response on Day One of a given campaign – therefore negating the importance of ‘frequency’ or the consumers ‘opportunity to see’ a given creative. At SmartResponse the founders experience in all areas of DRTV advertising dictates that almost without exception DRTV advertising only ‘works’ when the airtime is bought against the broadest TV buying demo graph – All Adults – from Monday-Friday and from 9.00am-6.00pm. Buying airtime outside this DRTV paradigm has virtually never produced profitable results regardless of the type of products or services being sold via this specialist medium. In the somewhat crude, but effective, world of established DRTV media buying/planning techniques Video on Demand (VOD), when it first emerged, looked like something of a panacea. Maybe at long last VOD represented a viable alternative to the well-trodden approach to DRTV media buying that has formed the baseline approach for the industry for decades. There has always been an in built challenge to selling inherently ABC1 products and services using DRTV advertising when the parametres of ‘daytime’ viewing will inevitably create the self fulfilling prophetic audience that is inherently C1D2 – not a desirable target market for premium marketing. As consumers ‘on demand’ viewing continues to grow exponentially in the UK – it is forecast to reach 7% of all broadcasting in 2015 – so the commercial opportunity increases in tandem for advertisers. VOD, unlike traditional DRTV airtime, allows companies to target consumers with DRTV adverts with the utmost accuracy against target audience both via broadcast and on line via 4oD, ITV.com and the plethora of other VOD platforms now populating the converged media landscape. Coupled with the fact that the consumer has to view the given VOD advert as a ‘pre roll’ prior to any given specified TV programme guaranteeing viewing of the creative the future of VOD looked bright…. This all sounds therefore like VOD may be the viable answer for companies with an upmarket proposition to use DRTV creative effectively – responsive content selling ABC1 products marketed directly to an ABC1 targeted audience. There is, however, one inherent market problem that will only be resolved by greater ‘supply’ and lower pricing for DRTV advertisers. The current CPT for any VOD campaign in the UK is normally 10 x the comparative cost of a normal DRTV traditional media campaign. Whilst the exact targeting and pre roll broadcast consumption of VOD may, on the surface, appear attractive until the CPTs drop dramatically for VOD it will remain a ‘brand building’ TV medium and return on investment in terms of net profit in crude DRTV terms will remain very difficult to achieve. What can members do? Members can follow each other, write and reply to comments and get notifications. Each member gets their own personal profile page that they can customize. Tip: You can make any member of your blog a writer so they can write posts for your blog. Adding multiple writers is a great way to grow your content. Here’s how to do it: Head to your Members Page Search for the member you want to make a writer Click on the member’s profile Click the 3 dot icon ( ⠇) next to the Follow button Select Set as Writer.

SmartResponse is a brand new agency that has been founded by industry experts, Pete Mills and Hannah Treble, in the specialist field of DRTV advertising and TV shopping. Our commercial intention and company strategy is clear for SmartResponse – to make DRTV and TV shopping new and profitable direct sales channels for all our clients. DRTV and TV shopping has proven itself since its inception, with the original adverts being aired in the United States from as early the 1950’s, to be a business that requires absolute expertise and focus to ensure that all the four key elements – DRTV creative, media buying, ‘back end’ operations and live sales optimisation – working seamlessly together. Without complete focused coordination of these four concurrent elements then DRTV advertising and TV shopping rarely works…. The founders of SmartResponse have spent their careers working exclusively in the field of DRTV working firstly as Directors of JML, the ‘household name’ UK DRTV brand, and latterly founding and running The Broadcast House (part of the Specialist Works Group). During this journey working with hundreds of brands and companies they have developed an unrivalled commercial understanding of DRTV advertising and TV shopping working across a broad array of categories and sectors including retail, financial services, charities, travel and on line businesses. Our full service DRTV and TV shopping agency service at SmartResponse will allow clients to trial, develop and scale up this specialist marketing activity. We will ensure that the four key aspects of DRTV and TV shopping are coordinated to their optimum by the founding Directors ‘under one roof’ and fully in house at SmartResponse to enable this medium to become a key and major profitable source of profitable income to your business both in terms of DRTV broadcast activity and the high growth sector of online advertising. We very much look forward to working with you at SmartResponse…. For further information please contact Pete Mills, Managing Director of SmartResponse – petemills@smartresponse.tv or mobile 07826 929 650