state of the industry report
Medico: Claims and testimonials seem to
be where most of the problems occur, and
most of the rejections come from standards and practices.
of campaigns. DR has its finger on the
pulse of the economy and is often the first
place where change is noticed in consumer confidence.
Stacey: Most of the companies today
have in-house legal teams, regulatory
officers and compliance committees.
Deals that used to get done on a handshake now require a contract the size of
a telephone book. We’re hearing about
increasing regulatory efforts in the area of
Internet marketing and especially affiliate
marketing.
How crucial to the DR business is the
industry’s fight against a rumored
“Do Not Track” list? If enacted, how it
could affect the online portion of DR
campaigns?
Lyons: If enacted, a “Do Not Track” list
will negatively impact online results of
campaigns.
Medico: Unfortunately, the mostly down
economy has forced traditional direct
response marketers to test more offers in
order to find a winner. Once they find
a winning promotion, these marketers
have to settle for lower overall response
and negative spending to support retail.
With regard to businesses that depend
on a steady flow of leads regardless of the
economy, these companies are forced
to pay the rates to clear with a lower response rates.
Medved: Most DRTV campaigns drive
the significant portion of online revenue
from organic search. They have driven
their customer bases online to branded
sites from television dollars, so “Do Not
Track” isn’t material in those cases. It
would, however, dynamically change the
monetization methodology for online display and video advertising. Knowing who
goes where and when is the key metric
to help drive online ad dollars and direct
response conversions.
Orsmond: The European recession and
concerns about the Euro currency continue to have a serious negative effect on the
traditional advertising sectors. However,
the U.K. is bucking this trend in that
long-form airtime has increased and avails
can be booked on a growing number of
cable and satellite TV channels.
Savage: It’s good for our industry to work
to protect its ability to market to consumers. A lot of media partners have already
adopted voluntary opt-out from behavioral targeting. However, once consumers
understand why they are being served a
specific ad, very few still choose to opt
out. A relevant ad is usually more desirable than an irrelevant one. To date, it
has not affected our campaigns.
Sarnow: Everyday, consumers’ trust
erodes. Whether it is political shenanigans over raising the debt ceiling or the
weak dollar, economic conditions are
having a very negative effect on DR results. Media rates are down, no doubt, but
viewership is down, sales are down and
the net effect is not good. Marketers and
their vendors have to micro-manage campaigns and find opportunities together to
increase sales.
How is the up-and-down economy
treating marketers in the DR
business?
Lyons: The volatility in the economy is
mirrored, to a large effect, in the results
How has technology changed the way
your company does business in the
past 12 months? How will it in the next
12 months?
Hawthorne: As a DR agency, we are
relying more on digital, mobile and social
media to beneficially impact the overall
MER for our clients. We have developed
analytical tools to measure the impact of
TV on digital response, and attribution
models that help us to understand the
true value of TV time.
Orsmond: The U.K.’s Office of National
