TV used to be a fairly straightforward place. Adverts were designed to make consumers feel good about brands, move them up the consideration list and hopefully somewhere down the line help encourage them to buy the product or service.

But then two things changed. First phone calls became much, much cheaper – now only your granny needed to worry about the price of being on the phone for more than a few minutes.

The second factor was that now with multi-channel TV, there are many more channels awash with advertising airtime, creating a much lower entry point to TV for advertisers.

Putting these two factors together meant that for the first time advertisers could measure directly the impact their TV advertising was having simply by counting the number of consumers who called them. No more waiting for post-campaign research, recall measurements and the like. And now, with the growth of the internet, response is often to go online and search for brands or to directly to the brand's website. Various research sources show that TV has a very strong impact on search and that sites see a huge spike in traffic when a TV ad has just been transmitted.

And while the brand advertisers were happy to use the new channels in peaktime, daytime ad breaks offered the best place to experiment with the idea of measuring immediate response.

These ideas have caught on to such an extent that agencies estimate that the area has grown by around 500 per cent in the past 10 years. Insurance companies, finance providers, travel operators, computer brands and charity fundraisers have all become regular users of Direct Response TV.

Direct Response TV is about exactly that, the opportunity for a commercial message to generate an immediate response. The ad will have a strong sales message combined with a prompt to call or get in contact via the web, mobile phone or interactive TV.

The traditional DR TV model focuses on low interest shows where consumers will not be bothered if they miss something because they are on the phone.

Classically these are morning or magazine style TV shows, kids cartoon shows or music video programming. Agencies say that coffee time and Monday to Wednesday are traditionally the best performing times of day.

The key for brands is that, the lower the interest, the more likely it is that consumers will call. Also, using low rating and low interest shows helps advertisers manage their call centre requirements.

Low rating shows ensure that call centres are not swamped when the ads run and because the cost is directly related to the audience watching, means that brands can afford to run lots of ads.

The creative challenge of delivering a successful DR TV ad is all about keeping it simple. The length chosen will generally depend on the complexity of the message, such as who will qualify for an offer and whether there are any legal notices that need to be included.

An ad designed to encourage consumers to call for a holiday brochure can be effective in as short as 20-seconds, while most car insurers use 30-40-second spots, but brands such as Time-Life can use executions as long as 120-seconds.

Classic charity direct response ads, for example, follow a simple pattern. They enunciate a problem, outline the solution offered by the charity and then explain what a difference your contribution would make.

Some brands also run shorter ads – 10 or 20 seconds long – at the start or end of the ad break as a further reminder or call to action.

In fact, such is the demand for DR TV advertising that TV stations have responded by investing more heavily in the quality of daytime programming. This helps to build the audiences watching these shows and acts as a brake on pressure to increase the cost per thousand consumers watching.

Having gained extensive experience in handling DR TV campaigns in the last decade or so, media agencies with expertise in this area are able to predict a rough response rate for a given weight of advertising.

A successful campaign is one that delivers the planned number of calls to the client, too many and the call centre may not be able to cope and too few and it may not generate enough business to fund future TV campaigns.

Working out which daypart, which spot length, which region, which execution, which voiceover artist and which offers will successfully deliver the planned response is part of the complexity of DR TV. Agencies consider that most consumers will respond by phone within minutes of seeing the ad.

Because it's a medium that allows immediate response to be measured, agencies can model the effectiveness of each element of the campaign and the TV stations being used much more accurately than they can for a brand campaign. As with online advertising testing is the key to finding the optimum solution for an individual brand.

In recent years, the level of complexity has been ratcheted up a notch. The addition of online contact points, red button as well as text options have provided new factors to be tested.

Online in particular – where consumers might respond later in the day or in the evening when they are at their home computer – means that brands have to re-calibrate the timescale for response.

Agencies and advertisers have also started to discuss a new form of TV spot, brand response advertising. These are ads that not only provide a clear call to action and a response path such as a website or phone number but also transmit a message about the product or service.

While all adverts say something about the brand behind them, the difference between the DR TV and Brand TV is that the former is measured purely on its ability to encourage consumers to get in contact and generate business for the advertiser.

In the latter case, the targets for new acquisitions will be lower as part of the value of the activity is perceived to be longer term.

Brands have also used direct response advertising in conjunction with more traditional brand TV spots with the aim of building up brand affinity and then tempting the target audience with specific offers both through TV and other media.

One brand that has successfully done this is Dell. In 2004 it made a radical shift to its traditional media strategy. Previously it had insisted that every ad was tracked and assessed for its ability to deliver a response.

In order to drive response levels still higher it took the unusual step of running a heavy-weight peak TV campaign for 20 days. It decided to make the switch after analysing all the factors that might influence response both individually and together.

The company accepted that each of the brand spots would not generate a response in its own right but felt that they would boost the performance of other media enough to justify the investment.

When the campaign was analysed it was found that for each consumer who called Dell after seeing the peak time ad and using the dedicated phone number used on TV, a further five consumers were moved to respond to another ad by the impact of the peak time TV.

Overall response rates were twice the normal level for previous above-the-line campaigns with press ads proving particularly susceptible to the dual message approach.

Q&A Nick Evans, Associate Director, Carat

Q: Is DR TV mainly about running ads on smaller channels

A: DR TV is all about cost effectiveness not just absolute cost per thousand. When the price is right ITV is used and Five made most of its early cash from direct response advertisers. If the channel works it will be used but DR TV buyers are always monitoring what channels are delivering for their clients on a cost per call basis and once this gets too high the channel will either be dropped from the schedule or we may look if there are any timebands or days that are still effective and concentrate on these.

Q: Are there any differences in terms of trade with the TV stations

A: The only real difference is that DR buyers like to work to a fixed cost per thousand instead of the floating discount used by many brand buyers. This enables the buyer to let his client know more accurately how many calls he will get.

Q: What impact has the internet and iTV and had on the way DR TV is used?

A: The internet and iTV have made great additions to the classic “call this number” especially with the cost of red button activity falling. However the message needs to be kept simple, red button works really well for either brochure or sample requests. For finance brands if the option is to press red for a call back then the call needs to be made within 15-30 minutes or the potential customer may have gone elsewhere

Q: How can DR TV work in conjunction with brand advertising?

A: Direct response and brand can work well together. When Esure launched women's insurance brand Sheilas' Wheels it did so using both forms of TV execution as the brand was new and fresh and it needed to make sure as many people as possible knew about it.

Brand advertising on TV also helps the efficiency of other forms of direct response advertising such as online, outdoor and especially press. One of our clients always sees a marked increase in calls from its press activity when it has ads running in peaktime TV. TV delivers a halo effect across all the advertising improving call rates.

Q: Isn't daytime TV full of cheap programmes and tacky ads? Will my company suffer from being seen in such company?

A: The DR TV market place seems to work in cycles, a few years ago you could not move for ambulance chasers, then it was loans and no car insurance. Although you will still get a larger amount of “dirty” brands the market is maturing. A quality brand does not need to worry about standout as stronger creative will always achieve this.

Also the gradual rise in direct response pricing is forcing some of the smaller financial brands to look for more cost effective avenues so they are gradually moving away from the larger TV channels. Daytime TV is improving as the channels realise what a strong revenue stream this can deliver and therefore the association with poor programming is starting to disappear.

Q: If so many brands are now using DR TV is the cost per thousand going up?

A: Increased demand will always lead to increased costs on TV unless the audience also increases. The constant arrival of new channels and also increased investment in daytime TV – with channels actively looking to attract a bigger audience – has meant that daytime TV prices have remained fairly stable.

Some channels are, however, trying to reduce the amount of DR TV advertising they carry at certain times of the day by expanding the period of time defined as peak time TV. This pushes up the price and reduces the cost effectiveness of these spots.

Q&A: Arthur Parshotam, Creative Director, Draft London

Q: What key elements should a brand include in a DR TV ad?

A: As soon as you get into rules, you're into formulas and you're into that's what's already been seen. Too many DR TV ads work to a formula.

It's all about someone shouting at you and then at the end there's a huge telephone number, which has possibly been repeated at you five or six times already. I think you can have ideas in DR TV, you can engage and involve people and still get the message across and get the call to action.

A lot of it depends on whether you view your ad as a short-term tactical vehicle or whether you see it as helping to build the brand and get customers on board for longer. If your DR TV ad can build the brand as much as the brand commercial, get someone hooked and you're doing your brand a much better service.

Q: What constraints are there in creating a DR TV ad?

A: DR TV has to work a lot harder in its ideas because there isn't a big budget for DR TV. The key element is to make sure the message actually has an idea behind it. As soon as you put an idea in it your audience will start to engage with the communication.

118 118 is a DR TV ad but it sits very comfortably with the brand communication because it's got an idea, it's funny and engaging. The Egg guinea pigs are a DR TV ad.

Q: How are DR TV ads changing?

A: The two biggest users of DR TV are probably financial services and charities. Charity ads have tended to work on a formula that shows people starving distressing images and then asks for £2 a month. That formulaic approach has been rejected in recent work for Cancer Research, the NSPCC and our own work for Oxfam.

Q: How did the Oxfam campaign address the DR TV challenge?

A: With the Oxfam ad we offered people the chance to donate their name, their time or money with a response mechanism that was mainly online or via text. Instead of showing the grimness that you normally see on charity ads, it featured young people, filmed in London.

We used Annie Lennox as a voice over describing the things that people could buy that would really make a difference such as buckets and things that people could relate to, rather than getting swallowed up by the bigger complexities of global poverty.

The ad has been on air since December 27 2005 and ran on and off until the end of April 2006 in a mix of 30 and 40-second ads as well as 10-second tactical executions.

TV was used along side other media such as press, posters and online to deliver a great response from the younger target audience that we needed to reach for Oxfam.

Article by Alastair Ray