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Suppose you’re watching your favorite TV show, and an ad suddenly catches your attention. It urges you to take immediate action, whether to call a number, visit a website, or text a keyword like ‘DETAILS’ to a specific number for more information. This is direct response television (DRTV), a powerful form of advertising available on all TV types — including live, cable, and streaming — that directly connects brands with consumers to drive immediate engagement and measurable results.
The goal of DRTV marketing is simple: convert viewers into customers quickly and measurably by asking them to do something in real time. Every DRTV ad is carefully designed to drive quick conversions with a clear, direct path from interest to action. This makes it an essential tool for marketers who need to measure their return on investment (ROI) for TV and see instantaneous results.
Key benefits of DRTV marketing
Unlike traditional TV ads that build long-term brand awareness, DRTV campaigns are focused on driving instant results and are surprisingly effective at doing it. Here are a few benefits of DRTV and why it’s a powerful tool for marketers in a digitized world.
Immediate customer engagement
One of the biggest advantages of DRTV is its ability to engage customers right off the bat. DRTV grabs attention and motivates people to act now, whether with a phone number on the screen, a QR code to scan, or a limited-time offer, often with compelling incentives.
Measurable ROI
DRTV is designed to deliver precise, trackable results. Because the ads encourage specific actions — like visiting a website or calling a phone number — it’s easy to see what’s working and what’s not. Marketers can measure everything from sales to lead generation, which guides them in refining their strategies for even better results. Pairing DRTV with digital tools, like web analytics or CRM systems, can provide even deeper campaign performance insights.
Broad reach
Even in the streaming age, live TV and cable still attract millions of viewers, which makes DRTV excellent for brands needing to expand their reach. Marketers can even tailor DRTV ads to specific audiences by choosing the best time slots on the proper channels. Whether you’re targeting parents watching morning news or sports fans tuning into big games, you’ll know you’re connecting with the right people at optimal times.
Types of DRTV ads
DRTV advertising offers several formats, each suited to different audiences, budgets, and goals, whether you’re introducing a new product or driving traffic to your website.
Infomercials
Infomercials are the classic, long-form DRTV ads that most people associate with the term. These ads typically run for 15-30 minutes and go into detail on product benefits and features. They often include demonstrations and special offers to educate and engage viewers with urgent, limited-time deals. Think of the iconic “But wait, there’s more!” ads used to sell everyday items ranging from household cleaners to exercise equipment.
Short-form ads
Short-form DRTV ads are 30-second to 2-minute ads that get straight to the point with a single message or offer and a clear call-to-action (CTA) to encourage immediate engagement. Short-form ads are ideal for quick bursts of information, like promoting a flash sale or highlighting a new product. A 60-second ad showcasing a new mobile app might feature a quick walkthrough of its features, followed by a QR code or website URL to download it instantly.
Product demos
Some DRTV ads focus exclusively on demonstrating how a product works in real-life scenarios. These ads are great for showing off unique features or solving familiar pain points that make the product feel essential. A cookware brand might show how its nonstick pans make cooking and cleanup a breeze while including a CTA to “order now and get a free bonus spatula!”
Testimonials
Testimonials from real customers or experts are a great way to build trust and credibility. Hearing someone’s success story or endorsement of a product or service can help viewers feel confident about their purchase decision. A skincare brand, for example, might air a two-minute ad of a dermatologist explaining the science behind the product, along with five-star reviews from satisfied users.
Call-in contests or limited-time offers
This type of DRTV ad creates urgency by promoting a special offer or giveaway. Viewers might have to call a number or visit a website within a specific timeframe to claim the deal. For example, travel agencies sometimes air ads offering free vacations or planning kits to the first 100 callers, which helps them generate immediate leads.
Hybrid ads with digital integration
Many modern DRTV campaigns blend traditional TV with digital tools, like QR codes, social media hashtags, or links to custom landing pages. These hybrid ads meet viewers wherever they are. A fitness program might air a short-form ad with a QR code linking to their free app trial, making it easy for viewers to instantly engage.
Success tips for DRTV advertising
Creating a successful direct response TV campaign centers on messaging that resonates with the right audience, inspires action, and delivers measurable results. Here are some essential tips for a winning DRTV strategy.
Strong CTA
Every DRTV ad should include a compelling, straightforward CTA that motivates viewers to act immediately. Whatever it is, your CTA should be easy to understand and time-sensitive to create urgency, such as, “Claim this limited-time offer in the next 30 minutes!”
Multi-channel integration
Direct response TV works best when part of a broad multi-channel strategy, so you should make sure your campaign integrates well with digital channels. This can reinforce your message, help consumers engage across platforms, and drive better results.
Audience targeting
Precise audience targeting is critical to DRTV campaign success. Experian’s advanced TV audiences, developed with the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), help you connect with the right viewers to drive immediate action. These syndicated audiences are now available on FreeWheel, the TV advertising industry’s global tech platform.
With over 2,400 ready-to-use audience segments, Experian enables you to target specific groups, such as:
- TV viewership audiences: Target households based on viewing habits and preferred devices.
- In-market car buyers: Reach consumers actively searching for their next vehicle, which is ideal for driving sales.
- Holiday shoppers: Engage gift-givers, deal-seekers, and travelers during peak shopping seasons.
New TV audiences released in August 2024
In addition to these, our August 2024 release introduced several updates that further refine Experian’s targeting capabilities. Some of the audience updates in this release included:
- New retail transaction audiences: These segments offer insights into categories like children’s products, parenting, hobbies and crafts, science and nature, and sports and fitness. With high spending and frequent purchase behaviors, these audiences provide a deeper understanding of consumer preferences. Notable segments include:
- Sports and fitness high spenders
- Children’s product high spenders
- Science and nature high spenders
- Updated TV audiences: New and refreshed TV segments now reflect the viewing habits of today’s consumers for accurate insights and targeting. Examples of newly added segments include:
- Free and paid ad-supported streaming TV subscribers
- Satellite service subscribers
- Cable and streaming TV service subscribers
With these advanced targeting capabilities, your DRTV campaigns can be more effective and resonant with viewers most likely to respond for maximum ROI and engagement.
Effective planning
A strong DRTV campaign starts with defining your objectives, budgeting effectively, and identifying the right media mix. Understanding where your audience spends their time — prime-time TV or niche cable channels — will get you the most value from your DRTV investment.
Real-time tracking
Tracking your DRTV campaign’s performance in real time is critical for success. Tools that provide immediate insights into viewer responses, website visits, or call volumes allow you to identify what’s working and pivot quickly if needed.
Measuring success
Measuring success against key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rates, ROI, or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is an excellent way to know if your DRTV campaign is delivering results. Experian’s advanced data solutions make tracking and analyzing campaign performance easier, so you can make data-informed decisions and deliver precise results to stakeholders.
Continuous optimization
DRTV marketing is an ongoing effort. Use the insights from real-time tracking and performance measurement to refine your strategy. Optimization keeps your campaign relevant and effective, whether you need to tweak your CTA, adjust your audience targeting, or test new creative formats.
How DRTV relates to advanced TV and connected TV
While DRTV has historically focused on immediate viewer actions via traditional linear TV, it’s found new relevance within advanced TV and connected TV (CTV) ecosystems. These modern formats expand the measurable, action-driven qualities of DRTV while incorporating the precise targeting and personalized storytelling made possible by digital technologies.
DRTV and advanced TV
Advanced TV enhances DRTV by enabling addressable advertising, which helps marketers deliver ads to specific households based on behavioral or demographic data. For instance, using tools like Experian’s Graph, advertisers can integrate data sets across multiple sources to refine audience segmentation and tailor messages to individual households.
Advanced TV also supports cross-channel consistency to provide a unified customer experience whether the viewer engages with linear TV, streaming services, or other devices. Additionally, programmatic ad buying plays a role in automating the ad-buying process. This helps advertisers optimize their bids and placements and get DRTV campaigns in front of the right audience at the right time, which maximizes cost-efficiency across both traditional and digital channels.
DRTV and CTV
CTV has a high rate of logged-in, authenticated viewers and provides a lot of helpful first-party data. This allows for hyper-precise audience targeting, cross-device attribution, and an ability to link ad exposure to conversions — even when purchases occur on non-CTV devices. Universal IDs like UID2 further strengthen these capabilities by creating consistent and privacy-respecting user identities across platforms.
Experian’s TV partnerships
Through partnerships with leading CTV players like Madhive, Samsung, Disney/Hulu, and others, Experian’s identity solutions integrate seamlessly to support well-timed, personalized ads across major streaming platforms. These integrations, powered by our Digital and Offline Graphs, offer a complete view of audiences to enable more controlled, effective activation across mediums, including free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels.
Using Experian’s advanced data and identity tools, advertisers can tap into the full potential of DRTV strategies within advanced TV and CTV to make campaigns more actionable, efficient, and impactful.
The future of DRTV
So, what is DRTV going to look like in the future? With the integration of digital and television platforms, DRTV is becoming more targeted, interactive, and personalized. This shift creates new opportunities for advertisers to drive conversions. Here are some key advancements that will continue to shape the future of DRTV:
- Addressable TV: Advertisers can deliver targeted ads to specific households based on demographic and behavioral data. It uses data from smart TVs, streaming devices, and third-party data providers to enable highly relevant ads based on the interests of individual viewers.
- Interactive TV ads: Interactive TV ads enable viewers to engage directly with the content through their remote control or mobile devices. Users can click on a product for more information or make purchases without leaving the TV screen and immediately convert.
- Authenticated audiences: With CTV and AI technology, advertisers can use first-party data from authenticated users to improve targeting, measurement, and campaign performance. Advertisers can create a more cohesive and personalized experience by linking viewers across multiple devices, which improves ad effectiveness and attribution.
- Branded apps with saved information: Branded apps that store payment and personal information streamline the direct response process. These apps reduce purchase journey friction and allow quicker conversions, as viewers can complete transactions with fewer steps.
- QR codes replacing URLs: QR codes are becoming a popular alternative to traditional URLs in DRTV ads. These codes provide a quick, convenient way for viewers to visit a website, access a product page, or act on a CTA simply by scanning the code with their phone.
- Better targeting algorithms: Advancements in targeting algorithms allow advertisers to serve more personalized and relevant ads. These algorithms help ads reach the right audience at the right time, which can increase engagement and conversion rates.
These innovations offer advertisers more tools to connect with audiences in a personalized, interactive, and measurable way.
Connect with Experian’s TV experts
Experian can help you achieve the full potential of your direct response TV advertising efforts with our advanced tools, precise audience targeting, and strong industry partnerships. We help brands create impactful DRTV campaigns that drive real-time engagement, audience connection, and measurable results, whether for traditional, advanced, or CTV.
Reach out today to work with us on your DRTV efforts and achieve better ROI, or explore how our expertise can transform your TV advertising campaigns.
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In our Ask the Expert Series, we interview leaders from our partner organizations who are helping lead their brands to new heights in AdTech. Today’s interview is with Ben Smith, VP of Product, Data Products at Infillion. Adapting to signal loss What does the Experian–Infillion integration mean for advertisers looking to reach audiences as signals fade? As cookies and mobile identifiers disappear, brands need a new way to find and reach their audiences. The Experian integration strengthens Infillion’s XGraph, a cookieless, interoperable identity graph that supports all major ID frameworks, unifying people and households across devices with privacy compliance, by providing a stronger identity foundation with household- and person-level data. This allows us to connect the dots deterministically and compliantly across devices and channels, including connected TV (CTV). The result is better match rates on your first-party data, more scalable reach in cookieless environments, and more effective frequency management across every screen. Connecting audiences across channels How does Experian’s Digital Graph strengthen Infillion’s ability to deliver addressable media across channels like CTV and mobile? Experian strengthens the household spine of XGraph, which means we can accurately connect CTV impressions to the people and devices in that home – then extend those connections to mobile and web. This lets us plan, activate, and measure campaigns at the right level: household for CTV, and person or device for mobile and web. The outcome is smarter reach, less waste from over-frequency, and campaigns that truly work together across channels. The value of earned attention Infillion has long championed “guaranteed attention” in advertising. How does that philosophy translate into measurable outcomes for brands? Our engagement formats, such as TrueX, are based on a simple principle: attention should be earned, not forced. Viewers choose to engage with the ad and complete an action, which means every impression represents real, voluntary attention rather than passive exposure. Because of that, we consistently see stronger completion rates, deeper engagement, and clearer downstream results – like lower acquisition costs, improved on-site behavior, and measurable brand lift. To take that a step further, we measure attention through UpLift, our real-time brand lift tool. UpLift helps quantify how exposure to a campaign influences awareness, consideration, or purchase intent, providing a more complete picture of how earned attention translates into business impact. Creative innovation and location insights Beyond identity resolution, what are some of Infillion’s capabilities, like advanced creative formats or location-based insights, that set you apart in the market? One key area is location intelligence, which combines privacy-safe geospatial insights with location-based targeting through our proprietary geofencing technology. This allows us to build custom, data-driven campaigns that connect media exposure to real-world outcomes – like store visits and dwell time – measured through Arrival, our in-house footfall attribution product. We also build custom audiences using a mix of zero-party survey data, first-party location-based segments, and bespoke audience builds aligned to each advertiser’s specific strategy. Then there’s creative innovation, which is a major differentiator for us. Our high-impact formats go beyond static display, such as interactive video units that let viewers explore products through hotspots or carousels, rich-media ads that feature polls, quizzes, dynamic distance, or gamified elements, and immersive experiences that encourage active participation rather than passive viewing. These creative formats not only capture attention but also generate deeper engagement and stronger performance for a variety of KPIs. Future ready media strategies How does Infillion’s ID-agnostic approach help brands future-proof their media strategies amid ongoing privacy and tech changes? We don’t put all our eggs in one basket. XGraph securely unifies multiple durable identifiers alongside our proprietary TrueX supply to strengthen CTV household reach. This agnostic design allows us to adapt as platforms, regulations, and browsers evolve – so you can preserve reach and measurement capabilities without getting locked into a single ID or losing coverage when the next signal deprecates. Raising the bar for media accountability Looking ahead, how is Infillion evolving its platform to meet the next wave of challenges in audience engagement and media accountability? From an engagement standpoint, we’re expanding our ability to support the full customer journey, offering ad experiences that move seamlessly from awareness to consideration to conversion. That includes smarter creative that adapts to context, intelligent targeting and retargeting informed by real data, and formats designed to drive measurable outcomes rather than just impressions. When it comes to accountability, we’re ensuring that measurement is both flexible and credible. In addition to our proprietary tools, we partner with leading third-party measurement providers to validate results and give advertisers confidence that their investment is truly performing. Within our DSP, we emphasize full transparency and log-level data access, ensuring advertisers can see exactly what’s happening on every impression. All of this builds toward the next era of agentic media buying – one enabled by our MCP suite and modular, component-based tools. This evolution brings greater accountability and next-generation audience engagement to an increasingly automated, intelligent media landscape. Our goal is to help brands connect more meaningfully with audiences while holding every impression – and every outcome – to a higher standard of transparency and effectiveness. Driving impact across the funnel What is a success story or use cases that demonstrate the impact of the Experian–Infillion integration? We recently partnered with a national veterans’ organization to raise awareness of its programs for injured or ill veterans and their families. Using the Experian integration, we combined persistent household- and person-level identifiers with cross-device activation to reach veteran and donor audiences more precisely across CTV, display, and rich media. The campaign achieved standout results – industry-leading engagement rates, a 99% video completion rate, and measurable lifts in both brand awareness (3.6 % increase) and donation consideration (13.7% lift). It’s a clear example of how stronger identity and smarter activation can drive meaningful outcomes across the full funnel. Contact us Identity resolution FAQs Why is identity resolution critical for CTV and cross-channel campaigns? Identity resolution ensures accurate connections between devices, households, and individuals. Experian's Offline Identity Resolution and Digital Graph strengthen these connections for improved targeting and consistent measurement across CTV, mobile, and web. What strategies help address the loss of cookies and mobile IDs? Solutions like Experian's Digital Graph enable brands to connect first-party data to household and person-level identifiers, ensuring scalable reach and compliant audience targeting legacy signals fade. How can engagement translate into measurable results? Focusing on earned attention (where audiences actively choose to engage) leads to stronger completion rates, improves on-site behavior, and drives measurable increases in brand awareness and consideration. What makes cross-channel targeting more effective? By linking CTV impressions to households and extending those connections to mobile and web, Experian's identity solutions ensure campaigns work together seamlessly, reducing over-frequency and improving overall reach. About our expert Ben Smith VP Product, Data Products, Infillion Ben Smith leads Infillion’s Data Products organization, delivering identity, audience, and measurement solutions across the platform. Previously, he was CEO and co-founder of Fysical, a location intelligence startup acquired by Infillion in 2019. About Infillion Infillion is the first fully composable advertising platform, built to solve the challenges of complexity, fragmentation, and opacity in the digital media ecosystem. With MediaMath at its core, Infillion’s modular approach enables advertisers to seamlessly integrate or independently deploy key components—including demand, data, creative, and supply. This flexibility allows brands, agencies, commerce and retail media networks, and resellers to create tailored, high-performance solutions without the constraints of traditional, all-or-nothing legacy systems. Latest posts
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