Response Magazine

I'm hardly the first to call infomercials the Rodney Dangerfield of advertising, but 25 years after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) eliminated restrictions on how much advertising TV stations could air in an hour, I feel oddly compelled to tug on my necktie and give my head a quick shake.

Every industry has at least one: the "dirty little secret" that only industry insiders are generally aware of. Planes with too many empty seats suddenly develop mechanical problems, requiring you to take the next flight, which just happens to be booked to capacity.  What's the dirty little secret of the electronic retailing industry?

For the past 10 years, I've struck out every time I've pitched testing the one-CTA infomercial. But now it's time we destroyed the myth about the absolutist three-CTA infomercial format.

If anyone ever doubts the power of advertising — of mass media — they only need to visit modern day Africa. Though still rooted in a subsistence farming-based economy, Africa has been "globalized." And it is advertising that powered this change. For good or bad, advertising changes minds, changes lives, even cultures and countries.

Remember life without Google? You should. It only turned 10 this September (though I believe that makes it 70 in tech years). I raise this fact to provide context for Twitter, the "micro-blogging" service that recently turned two. According to many who gaze into tech's crystal blogosphere, Twitter, like Google, could one day be a verb.

According to TwitDir ( http://www.twitdir.com/), Twitter surpassed 3 million users in September. The more users it attracts, the more uses crop up. From a global perspective, this is no fluke. India's GupShup small messaging service platform has more than 7 million users spending time mini-messaging. Back home, Current TV spiced up its presidential debate coverage by scrolling Twitter-sent "Tweets" as instant commentary. In direct response shops, our ideas are a bit more ... direct. There's really just one simple question: "How do we make money from this?"

Whether our economy is technically in recession is moot. Consumers are behaving with recessionary caution - tightening their belts and polling with gloom. Four-dollar-per-gallon gas keeps casual shoppers on their couches with front-row views of their declining home values.

Companies are in a funk too. Forrester claims that more than three-quarters of global marketing executives expect their ad budgets to stagnate or shrink by around 3 percent. So why is it that, from my desk, I see silver linings in darkening skies?

The answer is simple: direct response television.

According to media pundits, the writers' strike has the nation's big advertisers nervously wringing their hands. As viewers find favorite scripted dramas replaced by the likes of That Reality Show and Apprentice: WWE, they're shifting allegiance to cable, syndication and the Web. Advertisers, in turn, wonder how in the world they will chase down these scattering viewers.

Advertiser studies that measure how digital video recorders hurt their TV campaigns have delivered mixed results, but it’s common sense that viewers will breeze past commercials if provided easy methods to do so. For three years, Information Resources Inc. has researched the most critical response to DVR-enabled ad-skipping: the sales of advertised products.

May's NCTA Cable Show stirred up renewed hype for Project Canoe, Big Cable’s joint effort to leverage set-top box data and dynamically distribute addressable, interactive advertising nationwide. There have been more meetings than motion so far, but perhaps its impending rechristening will inspire project leaders to match its many promises with actionable achievements. For every big challenge that Canoe plans to tackle, machine-based solutions raise critical human questions.

Traditional advertisers bemoan the demise of the mass appointment TV audience, but DRTV veterans shrug unconcerned. Provided that media rates are set by sane GSMs, fragmentation will never destroy the direct response model. We've always built our audience by methodically aggregating comparatively small groups. One thousand clusters of 1,000 consumers respond significantly better than do 1 million viewers you reach all in one shot - so long as historical response data directs your audience targeting and media buys.