[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

You said “Simple fact is that those “display spots” do work..”

Where is your PROOF? Show me any study that proves that spot ads work? You can’t… But you can go to American Demographics magazine that publishes studiesa and find hundreds of studies showing that spots DON’T work.

There are 2 types of spots (ads that are 2 minutes or less), namely, “Display Spots” which are also referred to as simply “Spots” and Direct Response Spots which are always called Direct Response Spots and nothing else.

Advertisers are finally getting smart and realizing that spots are worthless–they spend the money on spots because they are forced to in order to satisfy their media budget minimum for distributors of retail products.

Agencies make their money by pleasing their clients and an agency really doesn’t want to sell direct response spots because they client will know immeditaely that the ads were worthless!

Half hour infomercial time is called either “half hour avails” or “infomercial time” or long format time.

You can go to American Demographics and look up the studies for yourself.

If you want to sell direct through an 800 number then spots are worthless and if you want to amke any real money in the mail order business then you won’t use any ad agency!

Bill SerGio

[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

I got into the mail order business when I was young and teamed up with a man who owned the remnant space in 13,000 newspapers and magazines. He had signed these contracts to buy all of the unsold ad space back in the 1940s when nobody dreamed what the value would become. His cost for a full page in the New York Times was $4 and $6 for a full page in the National Enquirer. If you paid $50,000 for a page from the Enquirer you would NEVER turn a profit–you might gross $16,000, but if you partnered with me and my partner, we would put up the page and take 50% of the gross of the direct response. The bottom line was that if you wanted to make a profit in print direct response, you did business with my partner–or you could NOT make a profit.

That was my start in mail order where I learn that it was what you paid for ad space that determined if you made a profit.

When I started airing infomercials and spots I realized that what stations and agencies sold spots for was marked up so high that you can’t make a profit so I went to the major time bankers. A time bank is a collection of 30 second to 2 minutes spots with a retail value of $5 million–that is the minimum. When you buy a timebank you pay an average of 50 cents per spot on any station in America and at that price you can make a profit with direct response spots–or you can per enquiry a deal with the timebanker–NOT with the station.

With infomercials it is much more interesting. I own a dozen ad agebcies that bid on half hour time in bulk and I apy from $15 to $150 for any half hour on any broadcast station in America or Canada.
Cable is even more interesting but I won’t go into it here publicly.

I make my money by buying half hour time and selling it to ad ahencies or buy airing my own infomercials in that or buying syndicating national TV shows using my half hours.

Because a half hour costs so mucjh less than 30 seconds, it is a business with awesome potential.

I wrote a program that repakces media buyers and automatically bids on half hour time to 176,000 sources of half hour time in my database. There are only 1493 high power broadcast stations but the total number of good sources, not including worthless low power sources, is amazing. No human being could call or email or fax 176,000 sources of media and ask for avails–my software determines how much to bid for each half hour using an artificial intelligence module I wrote that assigns probability densities to each avail.

In this way I can get half hours for less than anybody else…

When you buy a half hour from a station or canle network you can air an infomercial, or an entertainment show or ahybrid of an infomercial and entertainment show. A national half hour that airs in all 50 states and reaches 37 million viewers costs me between $1,000 and $8,000 for teh best half hours NATIONALLY. A 30 second spot with that same time slot can be sold, depending upon the time for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars while the half hours costs less than $8,000.

I don’t sell time to “clients”… I buy it for myself or sell it to ad agencies… A typical half hour I buy in bidding for $15 to $150 will be sold by an agency I might sell it to to their client for over $500 to $5,000 depending on the agency….

I don’t have the patience to deal with clients and my agencies only buy and trade in bulk time packages.

For example, if I syndicate a non-informercial TV series I will paint the side of a truck green and shot it going by–a scene that I will repeat over and over. Then after the TV show or movie is finished–not an infomercial–I can sell out product placement where I insert a logo on the green side of the truck. Product placement is very lucrative….

Bill

Bill SerGio

[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

I don’t see your point? There are a lot of 800-direct response on TV for many reasons. They may be placed through a timebamk broker so they only cost 50 cents each and therefore are profitable at THAT COST! When a client calls an ad agency and asks “How much will it cost to test my commercial?”… the agency will ask, “What it is budget?” and by coincidence whatever the client’s budget is what it costs to test a commercial…. the same is true for what some production companies will they a client when the cllient asks “How much to shoot a commercial?” and the production company asks–what is your budget?

And because you see something on Tv doesn’t mean it is making money!

For example, in the case of display spots, the comapny selling a product in retail must show the retail distributors a media schedule that they have spent so many dollars on spot ads in the area the product is to be sold–that money is a total loss to the company in almost every case.

I have literally shot and aired over 600 SPOTS for my own products and in every case I ran my spots through a deal with a timebanker so my cost per spot was always under $1…

Bill

Bill SerGio

[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

An ad agemcy would not be in business very long if it sold 2-minute “Direct Response Spots” with an 800 number because their clients would realize immediately that they were not making a profit.
Agencies lect to sell Display Advertising because their clients will never know if the advertsing made any money or not. The agency will present the Nielson numbers and that’s all the executive of a publicly traded cares about–doing his due diligence to verify the media buy. If coke or pepsi ever put an 800-number on any of their Display Spots they would realize that they lost money on every buy!

Direct response is nothing like Display Advertising and your comment about “production values” being lower on an infomercial is correct but NOT for the reason you think–the lower the production value the higher the Pull Ratio of the infomercial. A set with a black background will pull FOUR TIMES as many orders as a beatifully lit set with a bookcase and flowers because there is no visual objection to distract the viewer from listening to the sales pitch. I have produced over 140 infomercials for my own products and I own several companies that buy and trade in bulk in half hour infomercial time.

Production companies are used to doing high end productions for clients to please their clients but “good-looking” infomercials rarely work. By work I mean that the show will pull over $4 in TV sales for every $1 of TV time on every station PER DAY–less than that is an unsuccessful infomercial…

Bill SerGio

[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

I agree with you Todd… you can make a great living shooting and directing 30-second spots but that is called “Display Advertising” and not “Direct Response” which is what the other post referred to…

Let me define what I mean by “worthless”–they are worthless bedcause if you pay more than a $1 a spot you will never turn a profit over the cost of the media through an 800-number on a 2-minute spot.

All TV stations price their “Direct Response” Spots at 50% of the price of their “Display Spots.” Large companies like Coke or Pepsi buy these worthless display spots to promote their “brand name.”

If you want to air a direct response spot, then you can’t pay more than $1 for a 2-minute spot on any station, on any day, in any tieslot. Run of schedule spots are worthless as a form of direct response. You must a 2 minute direct response spot AT LEAST 200 times on the same station, on the same day and at the same time before it will pull a single order. You can air direct response spots on a P.I. or Per Inquiry basis with stations but the income is very little.

I AGREE with you that producing or directing DISPLAY SPOTS for companies can be lucrative, but if you want to air a direct response spot with an 800-number then you can’t buy the spots from the station–remember you bid on spot time and you don’t “buy it.”
To make any money with a Direct Response Spot you must cut a deal with a timebank broker and then your spots on ANY station and at any time will cost you about 50 cents each.

Since half hour TV time costs about 1/10 of what 30 seconds would cost you, why would any businessman buy anything other than a half hour if they have an 800-number and are trying to sell a product.

You are right when you say that clients with infomercials tend to be “entrepreneur types” and clients who want “spots” are larger corporations…

Bill

Bill SerGio

[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

There are 2 types of TV commercials, namely, Spots, and Infomercials. Spots are 2 minutes or less and are a worthless form of advertising. When a Spot comes on TV the viewer goes to the bathroom or refrigerator or TIVO’s it out and there is no way to buy Spots low enough from any agency to turn a profit through an 800-number. If you wanted to run a Spot for a product you would have to cut a deal with a “Time Bank Broker”–this is a company that trades movies for Spot time. The average cost on any TV station for any Spot, any Time of day is 50 cents per Spot and that same Spot might eventually get sold for as high as $1,500. Time Banks are sold in blocks of $5 million per bank–so unless you are a good talker and want to try to talk a Time BAnker into working with you, you will NEVER turn a prodit on Spot advertising. Don’t waste your time with Per Inquiry TV Spots either–a total waste of time.

The time worth buying is half hour infomercial time. A full half hour costs about 1/10 of what a Spot(2 minutes or less) costs.

The problem is that if you buy infomercial time from an agency they will bid HIGH for that times—usually 20 times what you could actually get it at if you bid low. An agency is not motivated to bid low because their 15% would be low! Your best bet is to partner with an ad agency to air a 30-minute infomercial.

Bill SerGio

Bill SerGio

[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

I agree with you about insurance. Back in the old days most people never thought about it but in today’s world it is a different matter. But I think the most important reason to have insurance is when somebody trips over a cable—nowadyas they sue you!

I have put over 100 celebrities in infomercials that I produced for myself and in every case they had in their contract that I had to have insurance and they always required a fax of proof prior to filming.

Bill SerGio

Bill SerGio

[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

You are probably right and I plan on taking them to a tech.

I had hoped to shoot some testimonials this weekend but I guess it isn’t a simple adjustment.

It is a shame because almost brand new SONY 537 cameras can be bought direct from SONY’s factory that were just in use in their factory and never sold for only $1,500 each. That’s how I go mine.

Thank you for your help.

The Infomercial King

[Bill Sergio]

The video out from both cameras, from the composite out on the side of the camera, to a monitor show the wavy white lines.

I recorded the output to a BVW-50 deck and the recorded video has the wavy lines.

The Infomercial King

[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

Thank you for responding, I am pretty desperate and on a very tight budget.

I am not sure how many hours are on the “heads of the cameras”? They are docked to PVV-1A backs, do you means the number of houyrs on the heads in the PVV-1A backs? How do I read the hours on the PVV-1A backs?

The company I bought them from said that they had tested the cameras and adjusted them and the picture quality is fantastic! Extremely sharp picture on both cameras except for light white lines at a 45 degree angles that seem to be flowing across the screen. I think these lines are across the whiole screen but you can only see these very thin white lines when they are over an area of black on the screen.

I have a Media 100i non-linear editing system which has a vectorscope–I cfould take the composite output from the camera and put it into the vectorscope in the Media100i but what would I look for?

The Infomercial King