Radio and/or TV Advertising

anyone have experience with them?

[Bubzeebub]

Has anyone here ever done radio or tv advertising (infomercials in particular)? What's it like? What costs are expected?

[Asbillszit]

Print was great.
Radio was bad.
Tv was bad.

I was the web developer for a large Ecommerce company. Whenever we ran ads for products on TV or Radio it didn't produce good results. But oddly enough Print ads in newspapers worked very well. I was surprised.

TV has the lowest CPM. I guess it depends on your product. as far as Sports memorabilia, Print is King.

[Asbillszit]

by the way you want to find out the CPM (cost to reach a thousand viewers/readers) before you buy an Ad on any media.

[minnapple]

Did a few print test in newspapers in the late 90's and early 00's.

No gain.

What is your product line.

On a different subject: You are using the yahoo store platform.

[Bubzeebub]

proprietary widget that can be sold nationwide

[Playful Melissa]

I'm getting ready to do this with a couple of my products as well.

I'm more interested in using the TV ads to drive traffic to the website and to boost creditibility - I mean - if its on TV it has to be real right?

[too much information]

I would have to say that it depends on the audience that your ad is presented to.

I had a friend who spent $14k for a weekly plug at the end of a local mid-day news program and he didn't get anything out of it. My bet is he would have done better if the promotion was played at the 5pm news but that isn't how the station set it up.

TV and radio can be an expensive mistake if you are not careful.

[Bubzeebub]

I agree. Long term tv is great because you get your name out there quickly to sooo many people. If it's relied upon for short term results it can be pretty risky. The more I look into it, the more I see online advertising to be effective to reaching a mass market. However, if it's credibility you want, I don't think you can build it by the online alone. If so, it's much harder. I'd like to hear what others think......

[lorax]

I believe there's an old-school rule of thumb when it comes to the effectiveness of radio: a person must hear the ad spot 21 times (or some such) before they'll take action.

The name of the tv and radio ad game is audience, frequency, timing and duration.

Audience: Who's the target audience and which medium? What medium (tv or radio) do they tend to rely on? What programs do they like to listen to and at what time of the day?
Frequency of the ad: how often you run the ad during any given day. The more the better.
Frequency of the key points: how often you repeat the key points you want them to remember - like your URL and/or name.
Timing: What time of the day is the ad run? During the morning rush hour when few people are sitting in front of the TV and the radio is just background noise as they drive into work? OR during the 6pm slot when most people are watching or listening to the nightly news?
Duration: How long can you keep it up. In order to get someone to memorize the key points you need to reach them at least a dozen times - probably more. Your ad may be seen/heard only once during a 2 day span by one person even though you've paid for 12 spots over those 2 days. In order to convert them, your ad needs to run at least another 22 days (at 12 spots/day) in order to obtain 12. That can get costly.

You might find this of use: [entrepreneur.com...]

[Bubzeebub]

Good info...thanks Lorax