ON INFOMERCIAL HEAVEN

HARD SALE

Thought it was my imagination, but this New York Times article confirms that there are more infomercials popping up on TV, more than ever before.  It's true especially in prime-time, on the major networks:

"It is a sign of just how bad the advertising market is: infomercials are running during network prime time, filling slots that automobiles and banks once owned..."

“The economy is the No. 1 focus for everyone, and it affects the advertisers and the rates,” said Pat Boos, the senior vice president for broadcast, acquisition and marketing at Direct Holdings Americas, which licenses the Time Life brand.

“When someone pulls off the air, like a pharmaceutical or medical company or a sports company, the networks sometimes find themselves with last-minute dead space,” she said. “We can come in and say, we’ve got a tape ready, we’ve got the product ready.”

But wait, there's more:

"Ms. Boos said that Time Life was running double the number of prime-time spots that it did a year ago. Networks try to avoid infomercial advertisers, because they pay “a fraction of what general advertising costs,” said Nancy Duitch, the chief executive of Vertical Branding, which runs infomercials for its products like the Steam Buddy and the Nicer Dicer. Although her rates vary, she said she often paid as little as 5 percent of what a general advertiser would.

Infomercials, or direct-response ads, promote a product that can be bought through a Web site or a phone number, often accompanied with blandishments like “but wait, there’s more!”

For networks, the challenge with infomercials is not their quality, but their price: infomercials qualify for much cheaper rates than regular commercials do.

In exchange for the lower prices, infomercial producers are given no guarantees about when their ads will run. The networks give priority of time to the full-price ads, which usually take up the slots during prime time and other popular times. When the networks cannot find advertisers to pay the premium time slots, they will use direct-response ads instead."

Guess this means we'd all better get used to seeing far fewer ads of shiny cars driving into the sunset, and far more of Billy Mays and his peers.

Comments

[Jake]

If the networks are only 5% of the typical revenue, then why even run the ads? When I see infomercials, I actively turn the channel and I think a lot of other people do to. It would seem to me that filling the time with value added content that keeps (or even attracts!) viewers would be a better way to grow revenues. The more infomercials there are, the lower viewership will be.
Except of course the Shamwow guy. He kicks Billy Mays' butt all day long.

[joseph Stafura]

Billy Mays Rules, although the Shamwow and lately, the always useful Slap Chop are cool until he can stand in a wind tunnel with an American Flag held together by glue and be heard as clear as day he is still the challenger.