Why is it that certain commercials with websites, instead of having just one address on different views of the same exact commercial, it’ll be like crazyfox.com …then another showing, same commercial crazyfox99.com
I’m already fairly certain the adverts are bull, but why the constant change?
Who has that kind of money?
I read/heard somewhere that the number tells crazyfox where you saw the commercial. All of them go to the same site, which is IIRC a multi-level marketing scheme where you supposedly make money by roping other people into the same scheme.
I believe the exist for marketing purposes (as LurkMeister says). It’s for tracking or measuring the success of an ad against a particular market segment.
One example: I create crazyfox91.com for radio ads running in New England, and crazyfox92.com for radio ads in the Southeast. Then 93.com for TV in New England, 94.com for TV in SE, etc. I then can tell (based on the estimated audience for that medium/region) how successful the ad is, by measuring the amount of traffic to a specific site against that estimated audience.
As far as expense, it’s minimal. The ads themselves are identical, except the text overlay (for TV) or final voiceover (radio). And the websites cost nothing, since they’re just mirrors created for tracking purposes.
That is severely screwed up.
Not too bad, not too invasive or clever or anything, but shit.
People amaze me.
We do a similar thing with phone numbers to track ad campaigns. The 800 number on the ad goes to the same place as every other 800 number, but we track which number was called to see what was more effective.
What’s screwed up about it?
Advertisers have been tracking the effectiveness of their campaigns for decades.
It’s only recently that the websites themselves could assist in the tracking. In pre-web days, you’d see things like little codes on coupons to show which local newspaper they came out of, or printing flyers on different colors of paper, or when you called in to order something, the operator could ask leading questions like “Was this the offer in the News-Argus?” and you’d respond “No, it was in the Tribune” and they’d soon know were their advertising budget was reaching people.
If anything’s screwed up, it would be to waste money by continuing to run ads in a paper or on a TV channel that’s not producing sales.
I used to work for an infomercial company. Depending on which product a particular company is selling, they use the numbers/sites to distinguish who it is that is selling it. I regular saw the mailing address of the company I ended up working for across a whole range of products, from Video Professor, George Foreman Grills, Girls Gone Wild, etc.
As above mentioned, it is also used to track the response of a particular campaign. All those “offer ends in 15 min” are just to encourage you to respond quickly, I can assure you, you don’t have to respond RIGHT NOW.
I also suspect they are also used for many get-rich-in-a-box sort of things. Many companies will give you the commercial to run, set up a website for you, etc, and you basically function as a drop shipper.
I used to do the same thing when I subscribed to magazines. I’d use a different middle initial for each magazine and was able to see who was selling my name.
Those are called direct response ads. Each phone number or website is unique to the network or TV station airing it. That way, they can figure out that Radio Station X provides good leads for this product, but not for that product by how many people call the number or visit the website.
You may also see ads that say “Call xxx-xxxx, ask for Betty.” Chances are, there is no Betty. But they want to see if booking the “Betty” ad on a tv station works for them and compare it to another tv station, that might be running a “Carol” ad.
I was wondering about this the other day, as I saw one of those “ends in a number” websites on a Kodak digital camera ad. I thought it was really bizarre, because when I see an ad for “superritzyjobs27.com” or “sellourstuff469.com”, I instantly think “scam.com”. But this was for something like “kodakpictures77.com”, and I couldn’t figure out why they would take a reputable product and advertise it alongside a scammy sounding website.