Strategic Edge: DTC Advertisers Capitalize on Lesser-Known Linear TV Units

Joseph Gray , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When it comes to buying national linear cable TV advertising, traditional national units aren’t the only option. Many leading direct-to-consumer (DTC) television advertisers are turning to a lesser-known option called “DPI” units. These DPI units offer substantial savings, often discounted by as much as 90% compared to regular national unit rates. This discount exists because DPI units are subject to local market cover-up by multiple video programming distributors (MVPDs) such as Comcast, Charter, DirecTV, Dish, YouTube TV, and others.  [For a more detailed explanation, please click here.]

DRMetrix is one of the only competitive television media research providers tracking DPI unit airings across more than 160 national networks. As competitive intelligence becomes increasingly critical, DPI unit tracking is a key component of strategic planning for brands. The chart below highlights 20 of the top DTC television brands that heavily invested in DPI units in 2024. For instance, DRMetrix’s data shows that 31% of 4-imprint’s national linear ad units are DPI units. Care.com leads the pack, with 58% of their total national linear units being DPI units.

It’s important to note that DPI units are not yet rated by any currency provider. However, advertisers are increasingly using a combination of deterministic and probabilistic methods to link DPI unit purchases to measurable business outcomes. This approach has gained significant adoption, with DTC television brands purchasing nearly 3 million DPI units from national cable networks in 2024 alone. Among the nearly 1,300 brands that bought national DPI units in 2024, 568 of them ran campaigns where DPI units accounted for 20% or more of their total ad placements.  For more information, and to discover how many DPI units your competitors are purchasing, please email [email protected]

 

 

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8th Annual AdSphere™ Award Winners Announced

Joseph Gray

8th Annual AdSphere™ Awards

 Recognize Top Direct-to-Consumer Advertisers in 2023

AbbVie, Progressive, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, E. Mishan & Sons, Great Healthworks, SharkNinja, and LifeLock by Norton among those taking top honors.

SAN DIEGO- (March 8, 2024) – Direct-to-consumer advertisers spent over 20.3 billion on national cable and broadcast networks in 2023 according to DRMetrix, an iSpot company.  To celebrate the industry’s accomplishments, the AdSphere™ Awards will honor the direct-to-consumer industry’s top advertisers and brands.

Awards will be presented to the winners at PDMI EAST 2024, where the leaders in Performance-Driven Marketing will come together in Miami Beach, Florida from April 8-10, 2024.  The AdSphere™ Awards is the first awards program to be inclusive of the entire direct-to-consumer industry with advertisers such as T-Mobile, Universal Pictures, Chime, Golo, Wayfair.com, University of Phoenix, Consumer Cellular, Sleep Number, Chewy.com, Burger King, and many others being honored.

“The AdSphere awards recognize best-of-class advertisers and brands across four industry classifications including brand/direct, lead generation, short-form products, and 28.5-minute infomercials,” said Joseph Gray, founder of the AdSphere Awards and DRMetrix, an iSpot.tv company.  “Direct-to-consumer campaigns achieving this level of scale demonstrate consumer popularity and best-in-class creative and media execution.  The AdSphere Awards are the most inclusive award program for the entire direct-to-consumer industry recognizing over 60 honorees including all of our best-of-category award recipients.”

AdSphere monitors a universe of 140+ national networks on a 24/7/365 basis.  In just over nine years, AdSphere has identified over 17,000 direct-to-consumer brands.  In addition to detecting over 900,000 infomercial (28.5 minute) airings, AdSphere has detected over 170 million spots of varying creative lengths up to five minutes in duration.  The awards recognize top brands across a wide range of industry categories representing all facets of the industry.  AdSphere segments campaigns across over 190 major categories and sub-categories. The complete list of AdSphere Award winners is online at www.drmetrix.com/adsphere-awards.html.

About DRMetrix

DRMetrix, an iSpot.tv company, monitors over 140 national TV networks 24/7/365, tracking direct-to-consumer ads using all creative lengths including spot, 5-min, and long-form which include web addresses, mobile app response, SMS, or toll free numbers.  For more information, please visit www.drmetrix.com and be sure and download our latest direct-to-consumer industry study!

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The Future of Direct-To-Consumer Advertising & AI

Joseph Gray

Ok, I’ll admit it – I’ve always been a bit of a technology geek.  Back in 1989, I used interactive facsimile technology to send computer generated reports daily to hundreds of television stations.  We didn’t have the internet back then, nor email, and AI (artificial intelligence) was a distant dream.

Stations were airing direct response TV commercials and my fledgling company was paying them based on sales generated.  It may seem basic, by today’s standards, but writing software to import orders from telemarketing companies, determine which station generated each sale, and creating hundreds of custom reports to deliver overnight, via computer-fax, was the secret sauce that helped grow my first multi-million-dollar business.

The ability for computers to fax reports pales in comparison to AI, one of the most exciting and disruptive modern innovations.  I thought it would be fun to start blogging about AI breakthroughs that are poised to disrupt the modern advertising industry.

For my first installment, I didn’t have to look very far since one of DRMetrix’s very own customers is using AI in exciting ways.  I spoke with Eileen Fraser of Intelligent Handshake (IH) at the recent PDMI East event to learn more about their technology and how it is making a positive impact on direct-to-consumer campaigns by increasing revenue, conversion rates, and AOV (Average Order Value).

Intelligent Handshake utilizes a combination of AI, machine learning and human touch, to render and personalize a consumer’s online or phone offer. Remarkably, in the blink of an eye (as soon as a consumer clicks a link or their 800 # call is answered), Intelligent Handshake instantly crafts an offer that fits a consumer’s purchasing propensity.

In our industry, just a few single-digit percentage points can make a huge difference and Eileen shared a case study with me that illustrates the significant impact Intelligent Handshake’s AI can produce.

The following case study is from a nationally recognized brand in the Housewares Sector

Given these results, it appears that Intelligent Handshake is really onto something.  What an exciting first AI case study to kick things off!  If you’d like to learn more about Intelligent Handshake’s AI enabled business, please visit them at www.intelligenthandshake.com    There’s a nice video of Eileen describing how and why she developed what she’s calling Advanced Instantaneous Artificial Intelligence.

Thanks for reading my first blog post in this new series.  Please don’t forget to subscribe by providing your email and clicking the blue follow button on this page.

If you would like me to cover your AI enabled company, please email me at [email protected]

 

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7th Annual AdSphere™ Award Winners Announced

Joseph Gray

7th Annual AdSphere™ Awards

 Recognize Top Direct-to-Consumer Advertisers in 2022

AbbVie, Geico, Adaptive Health, CarShield, E. Mishan & Sons, SharkNinja, Luminess Direct, Ideavillage, among those taking top honors.

SAN DIEGO- (March 6, 2023) – Direct-to-consumer advertisers spent over 22 billion on national cable and broadcast networks in 2022 according to DRMetrix, an iSpot company.  To celebrate the industry’s accomplishments, the AdSphere™ Awards will honor the direct-to-consumer industry’s top advertisers and brands.

Awards will be presented to the winners at PDMI EAST 2023, where the leaders in Performance-Driven Marketing will come together in Miami Beach, Florida from March 20-22nd, 2023.  The AdSphere™ Awards is the first awards program to be inclusive of the entire direct-to-consumer industry with advertisers such as T-Mobile, Universal Pictures, Chime, Golo, Wayfair.com, Southern New Hampshire University, Sheex, ZipRecruiter, NortonLifeLock, Consumer Cellular, Sleep Number, and many others being honored.

“The AdSphere awards recognize best-of-class advertisers and brands across four industry classifications including brand/direct, lead generation, short-form products, and 28.5-minute infomercials,” said Joseph Gray, founder of the AdSphere Awards and DRMetrix.  “Direct-to-consumer campaigns achieving this level of scale demonstrate consumer popularity and best-in-class creative and media execution.  The AdSphere Awards are the most inclusive award program for the entire direct-to-consumer industry recognizing nearly 60 honorees including all of our best-of-category award recipients.”

AdSphere monitors a universe of 140+ national networks on a 24/7/365 basis.  In just over nine years, AdSphere has identified over 16,000 direct-to-consumer brands.  In addition to detecting over 800,000 infomercial (28.5 minute) airings, AdSphere has detected over 110 million spots of varying creative lengths up to five minutes in duration.  The awards recognize top brands across a wide range of industry categories representing all facets of the industry.  AdSphere segments campaigns across over 190 major categories and sub-categories. The complete list of AdSphere Award winners is online at www.drmetrix.com/adsphere-awards.html.

About DRMetrix

DRMetrix, an iSpot.tv company, monitors over 140 national TV networks 24/7/365, tracking direct-to-consumer ads using all creative lengths including spot, 5-min, and long-form which include web addresses, mobile app response, SMS, or toll free numbers.  For more information, please visit www.drmetrix.com and be sure and download our latest direct-to-consumer industry study!

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2023 kicks off with a bang for DTC and DR television advertisers!

Joseph Gray

It’s been two years since we last encountered a national TV scatter marketplace favorable to direct-to-consumer (DTC) & direct response television (DR) advertisers.  Back in 2020, during the depths of the Covid lock down, DRMetrix an iSpot.tv Company, measured the largest ever year-over-year growth for DTC and DR.  Media rates were at their lowest at a time when more people were watching TV than ever before.  In contrast, traditional TV ratings couldn’t keep up leaving brand advertisers at a disadvantage.  For more information, please download DRMetrix’s 2020 industry study.

Following 2020, the media pendulum swung the other direction.  In 2021, traditional brand advertisers flooded back onto the airwaves.  On top of a tighter scatter market, DTC and DR advertisers also began to feel the impact of global supply chain issues.  But that same pendulum may once again be swinging back to the favor of DTC and DR advertisers.  According to Standard Media Index (SMI), by the 2nd Quarter of 2022, scatter market investment declined 17% year-over-year.  By Q3, things got even worse with SMI reporting that scatter spend on traditional TV was down 38% year-over-year.  Marketing Brew wrote a story about this which you can read by clicking here.  How will these trends bode for DTC and DR advertisers?

It’s now January 2023, and Bank of America just released their Consumer Checkpoint data reporting that 2022 was a solid year for consumer spending.  Total card spending per household finished 2022 up 2.2% year-over-year boosted by services spending.  If consumer spending holds up in Q1 2023, while the scatter market remains soft, it will definitely benefit DTC and DR advertisers.  In fact, during the first 3 media weeks of 2023, DRMetrix is already measuring a significant +25% increase in ad units for DTC and DR advertisers year-over-year.

What we witnessed in 2022, during the Covid lockdowns, was the inability of brand advertisers to navigate the rapidly changing media and economic environment.  Traditional ratings don’t provide a read on consumer sentiment leaving many traditional TV brands little choice but to be conservative and pull back on media expenditures.  Quite often , these are years of great opportunity for DTC and DR brands who enjoy the unique ability to measure consumer response and sentiment in real time.  As long as consumers continue to respond and purchase, these brands will aggressively expand their media buys even during the most worrisome of economic times.  Since media commitments in scatter can be made week-to-week, DTC and DR advertisers are able to optimize and change their media strategies on the fly.

If you’re interested in learning more about the DTC and DR television industry, click here to learn more about DRMetrix and our competitive media insight offerings.  Also, be sure to subscribe to this blog to be informed when we release our upcoming 2022 industry study (estimated to be in February of 2023) and when we announce the top DTC and DR advertisers in 2022 through our annual AdSphere Awards program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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iSpot to deliver unique solution to DRTV industry

Joseph Gray

I started my career in the performance-driven television industry back in 1989.  Back then, we called it “Direct Response Television”.  Heck, 33 years later, I still call it that.  In fact, the “DR” in DRMetrix stands for “Direct Response” although some affectionately refer to us as “Doctor Metrix“.

As many of you know, I sold “the Doctor” to iSpot.tv back in October of last year.  This month, I’m celebrating my one year anniversary with this incredible company.

One of the most exciting projects I’ve worked on this past year, has been enhancing iSpot’s ability to detect and measure impressions on national cover-up (DPI) units.

Where do these impressions come from?  Historically, iSpot has partnered with Vizio to detect ads running on over 20 million opted-in smart TVs.  Add another 20 million plus, thanks to iSpot’s recent deal with LG, and another 12 million set-top boxes under license, brings the total size of the iSpot panel to over 52 million!

On these smart devices, iSpot can detect ads delivered via linear, CTV, and OTT.  iSpot can also measure business outcomes when consumers are exposed to TV ads and take action by visiting a website whether that be direct, via QR code, or via a mobile text exchange.  No more “last touch”, as iSpot’s deterministic measurement allows advertisers to measure true reach and frequency, and the performance of TV schedules with greater precision than ever before.  Both Fortune 50 and the largest D2C brands are using iSPot’s Real-Time Measurement Platform to better inform and optimize their media placements with amazing proven results.

As iSpot becomes DPI compliant sometime in 2023, our best of class solutions will help the DRTV industry to address measurement and attribution for previously unsupported DPI ad units.

If you haven’t scheduled a time with us already, we’d love to meet with you at PDMI West on October 24, 25th, or 26th.

Representatives from both iSpot.tv and DRMetrix will be available to meet.  Our booth will be located in the main “Legends” meeting hall at the Hard Rock Hotel.

If you’re interested in learning more about iSpot.tv, please book a time with Robert Hoffman by clicking here.

Or, to learn about some of the new and exciting advancements coming to DRMetrix, including our detection and support for QR codes, please book a time to meet with Joseph Gray by clicking here.

If you’re not attending the PDMI event, please send an email to [email protected] and we’ll setup a Zoom call!

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Tracking of QR Codes in TV Advertising

Joseph Gray

Thanks to Covid-19, the use of QR codes was popularized by the restaurant industry for accessing menus. This has helped to create mass consumer awareness of QR codes and how they work. Both iPhone and Android devices have integrated QR code readers into their native camera apps further popularizing the use of QR codes.

The rich data that can be included within the QR code can serve many purposes including tracking which TV network and specific creatives consumers are responding to. QR codes are great for tracking digital activity and also provide advertisers with a novel way to engage consumers. Over the years, there have been far less elegant solutions used such as visible codes appended at the beginning or the end of a URL. Examples include: www.brand.com/TV1, www.brand.com/TV2, 1brand.com, 2brand.com, etc. Advertisers using this approach have struggled with various problems. For example, consumers would often ignore the appended codes. Also, many advertisers feel that messing with the visible URL dilutes brand awareness. In comparison with such approaches, the QR code is arguably a more elegant and versatile solution.

The team at DRMetrix has been working to be able to detect when QR codes are used in television ads and to be able to extract and report the data contained within the QR code at the airing level. This supports the use of differing QR codes running on the same network / creative where additional segmentation is required.

We are excited to announce that this capability has already been integrated into DRMetrix’s Airing Verification Service (AVS) system. A new “QR Code” field can be enabled in any AVS output or pulled via API.

Later this month, DRMetrix plans to add a new response type filter for “QR Code” in AdSphere which will allow subscribers to better understand the use cases and growth of QR codes. At the time of this writing, 374 creatives using QR codes have been identified across the 140+ networks monitored by DRMetrix. To provide some context, that is roughly 2% of traditional direct response airings including long form 28.5m infomercials.

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6th Annual AdSphere™ Award Winners Announced

Joseph Gray

6th Annual AdSphere™ Awards

 Recognize Top Direct-to-Consumer Advertisers in 2021

AbbVie, Geico, CarShield, E. Mishan & Sons, SharkNinja, Beachbody, Luminess Direct, Ideavillage, among those taking top honors.

SAN DIEGO- (February 28, 2022) – Direct-to-consumer advertisers spent over 20.2 billion on national cable and broadcast networks in 2021 according to DRMetrix, an iSpot company.  To celebrate the industry’s accomplishments, the AdSphere™ Awards will honor the direct-to-consumer industry’s top advertisers and brands.

The awards presentation will take place at PDMI EAST 2022, where the leaders in Performance-Driven Marketing will come together in Miami Beach, Florida from March 13-15th, 2022.  The AdSphere™ Awards is the first awards program to be inclusive of the entire direct-to-consumer industry with advertisers such as Amazon, Samsung, Southern New Hampshire University, Consumer Cellular, Zip Recruiter, NortonLifeLock, Wayfair.com, Chewy.com, Quicken Loans, PetSmart, and many others being honored.

“The AdSphere awards recognize best-of-class advertisers and brands across four industry classifications including brand/direct, lead generation, short-form products, and 28.5-minute infomercials,” said Joseph Gray, founder of the AdSphere Awards and DRMetrix.  “Direct-to-consumer campaigns achieving this level of scale demonstrate consumer popularity and best-in-class creative and media execution.  The AdSphere Awards are the most inclusive award program for the entire direct-to-consumer industry recognizing nearly 70 honorees including all of our best-of-category award recipients.”

AdSphere monitors a universe of 130+ national networks on a 24/7/365 basis.  In just over eight years, AdSphere has identified over 14,000 direct-to-consumer brands.  In addition to detecting over 700,000 infomercial (28.5 minute) airings, AdSphere has detected over 90 million spots of varying creative lengths up to five minutes in duration.  The awards recognize top brands across a wide range of industry categories representing all facets of the industry.  AdSphere segments campaigns across over 190 major categories and sub-categories. The complete list of AdSphere Award winners is online at www.drmetrix.com/adsphere-awards.html.

About DRMetrix

DRMetrix, an iSpot.tv company, monitors over 130 national TV networks 24/7/365, tracking direct-to-consumer ads using all creative lengths including spot, 5-min, and long-form which include web addresses, mobile app response, SMS, or toll free numbers.  For more information, please visit www.drmetrix.com and be sure and download our latest direct-to-consumer industry study!

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iSpot Acquires DRMetrix To Bolster DTC, Direct Response Offerings and Addressable Advertising Capabilities

Joseph Gray , , , , , , , ,

 

BELLEVUE — Oct. 11th, 2021 — iSpot.tv, the real-time platform for measuring the business and brand impact of cross-platform TV advertising, today announced the acquisition of DRMetrix, a real-time TV ad measurement company specializing in products for direct-to-consumer and direct-response TV advertisers. 

The deal expands iSpot’s measurement of emerging formats for addressable advertising and enhances its ability to track rotating calls-to-actions, including website URLs, SMS and toll-free numbers. This capability — coupled with iSpot’s ability to track distinct creatives at scale and correlate ad exposures to conversion events such as digital actions and in-store traffic — gives brands of all sizes the expanded ability to measure the business impact of complex and dynamic ad buys across platforms. 

“iSpot is constantly investing in the development and acquisition of technologies required to accurately measure the TV advertising of tomorrow,” says Sean Muller, founder and CEO of iSpot. “DRMetrix has developed unique and real-time measurement capabilities around creative versioning and dynamic advertising that will become increasingly important as the TV ad market evolves.” 

DRMetrix’s AdSphere™ developed a measurement system for monitoring all TV ad formats and executions including those delivered via digital program insertion (DPI) ad breaks. The DPI measurement capabilities allow precise identification of ad creatives that are sold by the cable networks as “cover-ups,” which MVPDs inconsistently overlay with their own inventories. 

This inventory, which includes addressable and local advertising, creates a continuous blind spot for networks, agencies and brands. The cover-ups are a favorite means for DTC and DR advertisers to invest in and test television, as they often come at a heavy discount. But both the buy and sell side struggle to accurately quantify the performance and value of this inventory because, until the combination of DRMetrix and iSpot, they could not be measured precisely at scale. 

“We developed a unique system for accurately measuring one of the most dynamic and difficult portions of TV advertising, and we amassed a client base that represents a growing and important part of the TV ecosystem,” says Joseph Gray, founder/CEO of DRMetrix. “In iSpot, we’ve found a home for our innovations to thrive and a vehicle to accelerate our shared goals of making all TV ad measurement more transparent, more actionable and easier.”

The combined capability will also create cost savings for advertisers that traditionally rely on spike analysis, rotating phone numbers and links as the primary means for attribution.

DRMetrix serves 120 brands, networks and agencies, growing iSpot’s customer footprint to more than 450 annual brand subscriptions representing 60%+ of brands in the Ad Age 100 and 95% of TV networks in North America. This is iSpot’s second acquisition of a real-time ad measurement company. It acquired Ace Metrix in January to combine business and brand impact using Ace’s comprehensive qualitative approach to measurement and scoring of creative performance. 

About iSpot

iSpot.tv is the market leader in real-time cross-platform TV ad measurement and attribution. The company’s always-on platform measures the business impact and brand impact of TV advertising and offers fast, accurate and actionable information that empowers brands to justify and optimize TV and video investments.

iSpot persistently measures TV-device impressions and second-by-second attention for all TV ads in a unified manner across linear, time-shifted, VOD and streaming environments. iSpot’s Ace Metrix product measures brand perceptions for TV and video creatives using rapid qualitative panels, and its market-leading attribution solution enables advertisers and TV networks to plan, optimize and transact on business outcomes. 

iSpot delivers its solution in real time via intuitive and modern dashboards as well as APIs and customized analytics. iSpot.tv has hundreds of brands and all major TV networks licensing its enterprise solution and has become a trusted currency for both networks and brands. Founded in Bellevue, Washington in 2013, iSpot has offices in major cities across America.

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New DRMetrix industry study shows that during Covid-19, performance-based television advertising saved the day

Joseph Gray

If Covid taught the television advertising industry anything, it’s that performance-based metrics saved the day.   While traditional TV advertising metrics were trying to figure out how to properly count pandemic eyeballs, performance-based television advertisers were counting consumer responses and consumer actions in real time.  Joseph Gray, CEO of DRMetrix comments, “It’s amazing when during a huge media disruption you have one sector of the industry that has 20/20 vision.  Performance-based television advertisers could see what was really happening with their TV advertising investment and KPIs in real time down to the network, daypart, and creative level.  What they discovered is that response levels were at an all time high while media rates were at an all time low.  Moreover, performance-based television advertisers could measure that consumers were still responding, engaging, and buying.”

In the early fall of 2020, DRMetrix released a study regarding the impacts of Covid-19 on the direct-to-consumer (DTC) television advertising industry.  The study showed that the top 50 DTC web/mobile advertisers reduced their expenditures during the quarantine lock down period by 34% while the top 50 performance-based advertisers increased their media expenditures by an incredible 76.6% helping to save the day for many television networks.

DRMetrix’s new “Covid Edition” 5 x 5 industry study covers trends in the larger direct-to-consumer industry from 2016 – 2020 and shows the impact of Covid-19 on different classifications of the industry.  The study stands as a testament to those performance-based television advertisers who helped to sustain the industry during difficult times and profited in the process.  It also stands as an excellent case study for all of the web/mobile advertisers that have been flooding into television in recent years proving that performance-based techniques can help them make television more accountable similar to online advertising.  Gray reflects, “When advertising on television, these advertisers don’t have to give up measurement and accountability.  They can have their cake and eat it too if they discover and implement performance-based television techniques.“.

Download DRMetrix’s new 5 x 5 Industry Study by clicking here.

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