including emerging ones like social media. For example, to better measure response to DRTV ads aired at
certain times of day or different versions of the same
campaign, marketers often create distinct microsites.
Brands also measure the responses from specific
search terms corresponding to ads or offers, explains
Ian French, president and partner of Northern Lights
Direct, a Toronto-based direct response agency.
“What a lot of companies are discovering is that noth-
ing generates the cost efficiency that online does. Search
is the most efficient form of advertising ever created,
but it doesn’t drive volume. However, a good DRTV
commercial both drives people to the phone and to the
Web,” he says. “We spend a lot of time working in the
online space and designing landing pages for microsites,
and we do a lot of multi-variant testing on the color of
buttons [on a page] and that sort of thing.”
Although a run-of-the-mill corporate website has
many uses, from branding to media relations, micro-
sites generally make better landing pages for consumers
targeted by DRTV ads, adds French.
“For nonprofits, if you go to a corporate site, it has
something for everything — customers and the press.
It’s a dog’s breakfast, and where the person has to go to
purchase is five to six clicks away,” he says. “Whereas
a microsite can have the commercial playing again and
the donation form, and as soon as the customer lands
it’s much easier and intuitive. In a nutshell, conver-
sion rates are often several hundred times better than
on a regular site.”
The convergence of DRTV ads with various track-
ing phone numbers and URLs has also created a
complicated tracking environment for brands trying
to determine their ROI. “Without question, it’s more
CarMD.com measures
its campaign elements
based on DRTV
performance analytics
complicated than it was, but it is also opening up new
avenues with desired customers, so it’s wonderful from
an opportunity standpoint,” notes Matt Greenfield,
SVP and director of client services at KSL Media.
This dilemma has forced DRTV agencies to think
creatively about how to prove DRTV ROI to clients.
“We will run an online campaign at the same time we
run the TV ads, and we sync them. It creates challenges in terms of measurement. If someone calls a 1-800
number, you know where it came from. But with more
response coming from the Web, it’s more challenging,
so we’ve developed a system to track Web activity back
to the TV networks,” says Koeppel. “You might look at
the calls that come through telemarketing and it might
Interview | Bernard Luthi, VP of marketing, Web management, customer service, Newegg
Q: How does Newegg use DRTV?
What are the company’s main
goals?
A: Ultimately, the goal is to take
advantage of the opportunity to
brand ourselves in one of the
key traditional broadcast
channels: TV advertising.
DRTV was our opportunity to extend our budget
and make good use of
the dollars available
and do it in a way that
worked with our media
plan. It was a solid opportunity to get additional exposure
for a significantly
reduced rate.
Q: Was the reduced rate the main
reason you decided to use DRTV?
A: That was certainly a big fac-
tor, but so was the way we could
structure the ad itself. We had
a very polished advertise-
ment that we made to
introduce the name
Newegg to an audi-
ence. We shot three
commercials like that.
They were very well-
produced commercials
and they were meant
to say, ‘Here’s a compa-
ny called Newegg.’ The
DRTV spots were
shot with a much
more grainy, hand-
held camera feel and inside some-
one’s home. We went out and found
real Newegg customers, and the
whole purpose of them was to add
on to the regular ads. You can see
how we produced the general spot
and then followed up with a spot
that says, ‘Here’s a real customer,
and here’s his first-hand experiences
shopping with us.’
Q: Do you run short-form
DRTV commercials? Which
works best for Newegg?
A: I think 30 seconds allows us to
keep the attention of the consumer
without pushing the bounds. What
we are talking about here are com-
mercials with someone basically say-
ing, ‘This is why I shop at Newegg.’
We are talking about experiment-
ing with a 60-second spot, but the
30-second spot works pretty well.
Q: Do they have a call-to-action
and other traditional DRTV
elements? Or is the goal branding
or a combination of the two?
A: It’s a little bit of a hybrid, but it
doesn’t have a ‘call now’ type of call-
to-action. The message is more of a
‘I went to Newegg — here’s what I
bought, it’s really cool, and I’m hap-
py I went there to buy it.’ It’s a very
soft sell, and it is really reaffirming
that we are a brand that is meticu-
lous about giving customers strong
information.
