TV viewing should be on the rise due to the coronavirus pandemic leaving millions of Americans housebound.  For direct-to-consumer television campaigns, who are able to measure consumer response and campaign performance in real time, will greater television viewership levels help to sustain the industry or will there be a pull back?  The U.S. economy relies heavily on consumer spending so how consumers respond to this type of advertising in coming days will determine the impact to this 17.8 billion dollar industry sector.  If traditional brand advertisers pull back, will we see more direct-to-consumer advertising filling the gap and, if so, what types?

To help answer these questions, DRMetrix has published a new interactive chart on its website that shows the daily airing count (ad units) for different classifications of direct-to-consumer advertising across 130 national networks monitored by its AdSphere research system.  The chart shows ad units by day beginning March 1 and will update daily.  One can see a recurring decrease in ad units on weekends which is normal.

Traditional Direct Response (“DR”) Campaigns 

(Campaigns using differing phone, web, or SMS codes in order to better track consumer results back to specific networks, dayparts, and TV creatives).

Short Form Products – Traditional call-to-order $19.95 types of campaigns.
Lead Generation – Campaigns that don’t advertise the full price of the product or service (ie: call for free information)
28.5 Minute Infomercials – Those late night program length advertisements

Brand/Direct Campaigns

(Campaigns using a single vanity phone or URL which makes it more challenging to measure the immediate impact of television)

Vanity 800 – Campaigns using a vanity 800 call to action
Web/Mobile/SMS – Campaigns that use a vanity web, mobile app, or SMS call to action

To learn more about these classifications, and historical trends over the past 5 years, please download DRMetrix’s latest industry study.

DRMetrix wishes to extend our thoughts and prayers for everyone’s safety and health during these trying times.  As an industry, we will get through this together.  Due to the cancellation of PDMI East, we will be celebrating our industry’s accomplishments, and honoring the top advertisers of 2019, at PDMI West in September.

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3/25/2020 Update – New “Cause of Change” section has been added to the report today.  For each brand classification, the top 10 daily brands are listed with the number of (+) plus or (-) minus ad units compared to the prior day.  Each brand listed includes a clickable play link.  Enjoy!

4/14/20 Update – Added toggle at top of graph to switch between daily or weekly data views.  Access historic cause of change results for any prior day or week by “clicking on” data points in top graph.  

AbbVie, Progressive, Nutrisystem, E. Mishan & Sons, Guthy-Renker, Lifelock, Luminess Direct, Proactiv+, among those taking top honors.

SAN DIEGO- (March 10, 2020) – Direct-to-consumer television advertisers spent over 17.8 billion on national cable and broadcast networks in 2019.  To celebrate the industry’s accomplishments, DRMetrix’s 4^th Annual AdSphere Awards is honoring the industry’s top advertisers and brands.

The awards presentation will take place at PDMI EAST 2020, where the leaders in Performance-Driven Marketing will come together in Miami, Florida from April 19 – 21, 2020.  Due to Coronavirus this year’s award program will be rescheduled to PDMI WEST in San Diego, September 14-16.  All of us at DRMetrix wish to extend our thoughts and prayers for everyone’s safety and health during these trying times.

AdSphere Awards is the first awards program to be inclusive of the entire direct-to-consumer industry with advertisers such as Facebook, Credit Karma, Peloton Cycle, Legal Zoom, Chewy.com, Carvana.com, Booking.com, and many others being honored.

“The AdSphere awards recognize best-of-class advertisers and brands across four industry classifications including short-form products, lead generation, brand/direct, and 28.5-minute infomercials,” said Joseph Gray, AdSphere Awards founder and CEO of 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 five years, AdSphere has identified over 11,000 direct-to-consumer brands.  In addition to detecting over 495,000 infomercial (28.5 minute) airings, AdSphere has detected over 55 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.

In addition to the “Best of Category” awards, the following top nine advertisers will receive the coveted AdSphere Award.

About DRMetrix

DRMetrix, the industry’s leading television research 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!