It dawned on me as I was watching the Olympics this week the impact DRTV is having on traditional marketers. While we didn’t see a preponderance of 800#/drive to web (though I saw some), the impact I spotted was more subtle.

There has been a great deal of discussion regarding the web’s impact on television viewing. We’ve discussed at length the misperception that TV viewing is declining — there is plenty of research recently published that shows that, in fact, TV viewership is increasing.

Digging deeper behind the “TV is Dying” headlines, I’d propose that what the “experts” really want to be saying is, “The :15 and :30 TV Commercial is Dying.” I suspect that general marketers are beginning to learn what DRTV marketers have known for a long time — longer length commercials are more effective than shorter length commercials.

Here are a couple spots from Nike and P & G that appeared frequently during the Olympics:

Personally, I love these spots — I don’t get tired watching them. The question I ask myself is, “Would I like them as much if they were a :15 or a :30?” Probably not.

As more traditional marketers become exposed to the benefits of longer length DRTV spots, I believe you are going to see traditional marketers shift the balance from :15/:30’s to :60/:90/:120’s. The same reason DRTV marketers know they generate more calls/traffic per dollar via longer length sports, smart traditional marketers will learn this is the strategy they will need to follow for TV to be effective for them.

Bill McCabe is EVP/COO at A. Eicoff & Co., one of North America’s largest DRTV agencies.

Tags: advertising, direct response television, DRTV, DRTV commercial, DRTV Demo, DRTV Direct Response TV, online video, short-form infomercial, short-form TV commercials

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 11:37 am and is filed under DRTV Best Practices, DRTV Creative, DRTV Messaging, DRTV News, Media Buying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.