Study Numbers Still Popular With Advertisers

Study: Numbers Still Popular With Advertisers

Summary: Despite growth of the Internet over the past seven years, the use of toll-free phone numbers in television advertising continues to grow, indicating that the telephone remains a prevalent response tool, according to a recent study.

Study: Numbers Still Popular With Advertisers

Article Body: Despite growth of the Internet over the past seven years, the use of toll-free phone numbers in television advertising continues to grow, indicating that the telephone remains a prevalent response tool, according to a recent study.

The Toll-free Numbers in Television Advertising study, commissioned by response, concluded that percent of all television commercials feature phone numbers, and percent of those phone numbers are toll-free. Furthermore, percent of the toll-free numbers in television ads use the prefix. Of the numbers, percent are "vanity" numbers, meaning they spell out a word or company name.

A similar study conducted in concluded that percent of TV commercials displayed toll-free numbers. At that time, just percent were vanity numbers.

The study of , television commercials from four networks in four major markets found that vanity phone numbers are increasingly prevalent in today's television ads, up approximately percent. The prefix remains the leader as a direct response tool over , and prefixes. The study found that these prefixes come in far behind the prefix for usage in television advertising at percent, percent and percent respectively.

"Over the last seven years, advertisers continue to understand that using a unique and memorable mechanism in television advertisements increases their response rates," said Mitchell Knisbacher, president of response, a provider of vanity numbers and toll-free service. "The two TV studies, over the past seven years, prove that toll-free and vanity number usage in advertising is still strong, and growing. Advertisers continue to provide their customers with phone numbers so they can make contact with a live person, notwithstanding the spectacular growth of the Web."