Does DRTV Drive Digital? Or Does Digital Drive DRTV

Now that the D button on my keyboard is officially broken, the question above is a frequent topic of discussion among our clients.

At Eicoff, we spend a great deal of time analyzing our clients' response data.  Clients rely on us to compile and interpret their 800# and digital response data, allowing us to adjust their television and digital spends regularly. 

As an agency, we have the interesting perspective of standing at the intersection of TV and digital marketing. Our heritage lies in analyzing immediate, measurable responses to TV commercials. Whether someone responds via an 800# or visits our client’s site via a Google search, that response is a direct result of a TV commercial.

We recently took an in-depth look at how we were analyzing and optimizing a client’s direct response television advertising (DRTV) spend. This client in particular had always preferred that we optimize the media strictly based only on phone responses. For this new analysis, the client allowed us to factor in the effect our TV ads had on digital response. And what they saw was eye-opening for them.

The 15 top-performing stations changed significantly. Stations that hadn't been successful at driving calls were doing a superior job of driving response online. Of even greater significance, the online respondents were higher quality leads with a stronger conversion rate and a higher lifetime value.

A cottage industry of “attribution” companies has emerged. While most of these companies have solid experience in attributing “last-touch” visits from a digital perspective, these companies would be well-served in better understanding how the impulse and immediacy of a TV response (not to mention the varying response curves) differs from a traditional display or paid search visit.

Digital analysts need to understand the “lift” a television campaign can provide.  Website visits rarely happen on their own – most would agree that something is prompting people to go to a website. In many cases the cause is offline advertising. Frequently, we find that a bump in traffic is often directly linked to a given spot on a given station at a given time.

I’m just scratching the surface of the opportunities out there for improving your advertising results.  When you bridge the TV-digital divide—when you factor both calls and digital data into your analysis—you possess an unprecedented ability to target your market effectively.