TV Ad Stats - 51% Include URLs

Media Buyer Planner [a nice resource for those in the space] has a good piece on how urls are more popular than 1-800 numbers in television ads.

The use of URLs as a direct response method in TV commercials has overtaken the use of toll-free phone numbers, according to a report commissioned by 800response, a provider of 800 numbers. Including a URL in TV commercials has jumped from just 19 percent in 1998 to 51 percent in 2005. Meanwhile, the use of toll-free telephone numbers has risen to 28 percent, up from 25 percent in 1998.

This is quite interesting. I remember watching those late night infomercials when I was in college where Don Lapre was selling his "Making Money Kit" and talking about the golden land of classified ads and 800 numbers. Ah those were the days. Were being the operative phrase here. Now urls have taken over and the game is continuing to evolve.

Analog To Digital Ad Campaign Hybrids
Using urls in tv ads and even in print ads aren't a new thing at all. Pick up an old copy of any Wired magazine and look for the IBM [now Lenovo] Thinkpad ads. They always create a unique url for their print ads so they can measure campaign effectiveness. In fact, it goes much deeper than that. Those urls IBM provides are only available if you directly type it into your browser and the links can't be found anywhere on their site. This is one of the reasons Marketing Shift is a passion of mine. Showing folks where the analog and digital ad worlds overlap each other just rocks! There are also some search engine optimization elements IBM has overlooked in their implementation of this type of analog to digital ad campaign but I'll forego those for now unless there is a lot of interest in that topic.

Oh yes, hat tip to Paul Allen and his internet entrepreneur blog for the original quote and hat tip to Paul's reader for tipping him off on the piece.