Case Studies

The site's Web video player is built on Microsoft's Web application framework, Silverlight. According to Miller, the broadcaster has been planning the project over the last nine months, with more intensive coding work done on the backend with Microsoft over the last four months or so.

eStara was awarded “Best Direct Response Campaign” at ad:tech’s recent award ceremony in San Francisco. The award focuses on innovative, interactive campaigns that yield a measurable response rate. eStara’s campaign resulted in 1,500 new memberships for a Portugal soccer club. The campaign combined online video, web interactivity, and click to call technology.

We know what everyone calls TiVo users: ad skippers. So what should we call Video On Demand users? Ad-oholics? In Los Angeles, Adlink just finished a campaign in which traditional 30 second commercials drove traffic to cable viewers' On Demand menus. Prospective car buyers could then choose to watch lengthier videos from a luxury dealership. In four weeks, viewers demanded to see advertising 4500 times. Not earth-shattering, but not bad for a city of ad skippers.

In the most recent Response magazine, our own Tim Hawthorne takes a look at Christmas-time advertising. Our team charted TV for hours and found that nearly 70 percent of all commercials included a web address. Fourteen percent featured 800-numbers. In fact, many DRTV staples now appear regularly in 15- and 30-second spots -- direct calls to action, purchase incentives, and even free samples. Indeed, someday all advertising will be DRTV.

While we usher in all sorts of new forms of advertising, it's far too early to discard the old standbys. Home shopping channel QVC recorded record sales the first weekend this month, grossing $105 million from television, and another 25 million from QVC.com. Michael Dell himself helped move 31,000 computers, and DRTV stalwart Bose sold a lot of its music systems. Direct response television lives and thrives.

I came across a Viodi TV interview with John McDevitt of HSN Shop by Remote who gives hope to all of we iTV zealots. According to McDevitt, the ability to complete a purchase with about 30 seconds of TV remote clicking is proving effective at converting home shopping viewers into buyers. It's just common sense. A lot of home shopping sales rely on variations of the impulse purchasing themes. The faster you enable consumers to act on those impulses, the greater your number of sales.

The Non-Profit Times is just what you'd guess -- a news publication that caters to non-profit organizations. In a story last month about the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the DRTV industry received major plaudits. Since beginning a direct response campaign in 2005, the Conservancy has averaged nearly 4,000 new donors each month--a very good rate given Canada's population. The article contends that DRTV "surpasses almost all other forms of fundraising in its immediacy of results."

Remember K-Tel? Kaszas Communications' Maria Ford does. Her Straight To The Point blog shares a quick story about the power of taking some chances. K-Tel's Phil Kevis was in England trying to recreate the brush sales success he enjoyed in the states. But no U.K. retailers would carry his product. Undeterred, he ran his direct response spots anyway. Read on for how it played out....

Once a mainstay in the wee hours, the Contour Pillow is being crowded out of direct-response TV as conventional brand advertisers and fellow DRTV behemoths jockey for insanely hot remnant TV time. As big-brand marketers like P&G pile into direct-response TV advertising, classic DRTV players such as Contour are pulling back.