DRTV Media Buying Agency UK

DRTV media buying is TV airtime bought to produce a measurable response (a call, a visit, an app install, a sale) and judged on cost per response or cost per acquisition rather than on reach. It gets bought differently from brand TV: cheaper, often pre-emptible inventory, heavy use of daytime and off-peak, and a schedule that gets re-cut every week on what actually drove response. We plan and buy direct response TV campaigns for UK advertisers, and we measure them spot by spot.

How DRTV airtime is bought differently

A brand buyer asks “how many of the right people saw it, and how often?” A DRTV buyer asks “which spots made the phone ring, and what did each response cost?” That changes almost every trading decision.

• Pre-emptible over fixed. Response campaigns usually run on pre-emptible spots, where the broadcaster can bump you for a higher-paying advertiser. You accept some uncertainty in exchange for a lower price. Fixed spots and first-in-break premiums rarely pay back on a cost-per-response basis unless the creative is very strong.
• Daytime and off-peak. Daytime, late night and weekend mornings are where DRTV lives. The audience is smaller, but they are at home, the phone or laptop is within reach, and airtime is cheaper. Peak buys reach, not necessarily response.
• Cost per response is the KPI. CPT still matters because it drives cost, but a low CPT in a break nobody responds from is still wasted money. We report CPT and cost per response side by side so you can see when the cheap airtime is also the productive airtime and when it isn’t.
• Weekly optimisation. A good DRTV schedule is never finished. Each week we rank stations, dayparts and individual spots by cost per response, move money from the bottom of that list to the top, and re-book. The first few weeks are for learning; after that the schedule should get steadily cheaper per response.

Channel choice follows the same logic. The biggest channels are not automatically the best for response; smaller digital channels with cheap daytime inventory often beat them on cost per call. Streaming inventory can sit alongside linear too: BVOD and connected TV add frequency control and targeting, though the response pattern is different from a linear spike and needs to be read differently.

Measuring TV response

TV response arrives in a spike. Web visits, app sessions and branded searches jump in the minutes after a spot airs and then fall back towards normal. Phone response tends to arrive faster and fall away faster; web and app response has a longer tail, especially where people search the brand name rather than type a URL.

Measuring TV response well means capturing that spike accurately and tying it to the right spot. For each airing we want the channel, time, break position, spot length, copy version and the audience delivered according to BARB. Against that we lay minute-by-minute data from your website analytics, call logs and app platform. Anything coarser, such as hourly or daily totals, hides the spot-level signal and makes optimisation guesswork.

Plan the measurement before the first spot airs. It is very hard to rebuild clean response data after the event, and the first fortnight of a new campaign is exactly when you most need it.

Call tracking, unique URLs and promo codes

The simplest attribution is a response route that only TV uses. Three routes do most of the work:

• Unique phone numbers. A dedicated number per campaign, and ideally per station group or copy version, lets you read calls directly against spots. Make sure the call platform logs time to the second and records answered, missed and abandoned calls separately: a spike you cannot answer is response you paid for and lost.
• Vanity URLs. A short, memorable URL used only on TV. It will under-count, because many people search the brand name instead, but it gives a clean floor you can trust.
• Promo codes. A TV-only code captures people who respond later or through another route. Expect some leakage onto voucher sites; change codes between bursts if it becomes a problem.

None of these captures everything. Treat them as the directly measured share of response and use baseline modelling to estimate the rest.

Baseline and uplift attribution

Most TV response comes through channels that TV does not own: direct traffic, brand search, the app. To credit it properly you need a baseline, meaning what traffic would have been in that window if the spot had not aired, and you measure the uplift above it.

In practice that means modelling expected traffic for each minute from the same time on comparable days, then attributing the excess within a short window after each spot. The window should be set from your own data: too short and you miss the tail, too long and you credit TV with ordinary traffic. Where two spots air close together on different channels, the uplift has to be split, usually in proportion to the audience each delivered.

Good DRTV attribution reporting shows cost per response by station, daypart, spot length and copy, alongside the CPT paid. It should also be clear about where the model is weak. Overnight spots with tiny audiences, for example, often produce uplifts too small to read reliably. Spot-level attribution also understates TV’s longer-term effect on brand search and repeat purchase. Thinkbox’s Profit Ability 2 study (141 brands, £1.8bn of spend, 2021–23) found linear TV returned £5.94 of full profit per £1, well above the all-media average of £4.11, and most of that return comes after the response spike has gone.

Response rate analysis

Raw response counts mislead because audiences vary so much by spot. The useful measure is response per thousand impacts, which lets you compare a big peak spot with a small daytime one on equal terms. Put that alongside the CPT paid and you get cost per response, which is what the budget decision rests on.

What we look for when analysing response rates:

• Station and daypart patterns. Some channels respond far above their audience size and some far below. That is the main lever in weekly optimisation.
• Break position. Whether the spot ran at the start, middle or end of the break. Paying for first-in-break is only worth it if the response data shows the lift.
• Programme environment. Live sport and gripping drama can hold attention but suppress response until the programme ends. Lighter daytime content often gets people to act straight away.
• Wear-out. Response per thousand usually drifts down as the same audience sees the same ad repeatedly. That is the signal to refresh copy or rest a station, not to stop TV.
• Seasonality and news. Response moves with the calendar and with events. See our seasonality guide for how airtime prices shift across the year, which affects cost per response as much as response rates do.

DRTV creative testing

Creative usually moves cost per response more than media does, so it has to be tested as carefully as the schedule. The most productive tests are also the cheapest to make.

• End-frames. The last few seconds carry the call to action. Testing the phone number against the URL, the offer wording, and how long the response route stays on screen can shift response noticeably without reshooting anything.
• Spot lengths. Airtime is priced by spot-length factor against a 30-second base. A 10″ costs roughly half a 30″ and a 60″ roughly double (approximate structural factors; each sales house sets its own). A 60″ that explains a complex product can beat two 30″s on cost per response; a 10″ reminder can be very efficient once people already know the offer. The response data decides, not the spot-length factor.
• Offer and message. Price-led against benefit-led, a single offer against a range. Run one variable at a time or you won’t know what caused the change.

Rotate versions evenly across the same stations and dayparts so the media doesn’t bias the test, and give each version enough airings to get past the noise. Before shooting, remember that every version needs Clearcast approval, and response claims and offers get close scrutiny. Our airtime buying guide covers clearance timing.

Landing page planning for TV spikes

A national spot can send more visitors to your site in a few minutes than a normal hour brings. Pages that are fine day to day can slow down or fall over at exactly the moment you have paid to fill them.

• Load-test for the spike, not the average. Check hosting, caching and any third-party scripts that slow the page under load. Talk to your developers before the first big spot.
• Match the ad. The offer, price and wording on screen must be the first thing visitors see. If they have to hunt for it, many won’t.
• Design for mobile. Many people respond on the phone in their hand while the TV is still on. Keep the form short and the call button obvious.
• Staff the phones. If you run a call centre, share the spot schedule with it so staffing matches airtime. Missed calls in the spike are the most expensive failure in DRTV.

For online retailers, the checkout matters as much as the landing page. Our ecommerce TV advertising page covers that in more detail.

Budget and getting started

DRTV is often the way advertisers first try television, because the results are visible within weeks. Thinkbox data for 2025 shows 984 new TV advertisers, up 6% year on year, and more than 400 advertisers spent under £25k on TV across the year. A test campaign has to be big enough to produce readable response on each station you want to judge. Spread a small budget across too many channels and none of them tells you anything. Our small business TV guide and TV advertising costs page explain how to size a first burst.

For reference on prices, TheHub market data published on our ITV1 CPT index puts the ITV1 average market Adults CPT at £14.32 for January to August 2026, up 19.6% on 2025’s £11.97. That is an average market price; what an advertiser actually pays is usually less, and DRTV buyers using pre-emptible daytime inventory often pay less again.

If you already run DRTV, send us the schedule and the response data and we’ll tell you where the cost per response is leaking. Get in touch here.

Questions

What is a DRTV agency?

A DRTV agency plans and buys TV airtime to generate direct response (calls, web visits, app installs or sales) and optimises the schedule every week on cost per response. The core skills are buying cheap, response-productive inventory and reading spot-level attribution accurately.

How is DRTV different from brand TV advertising?

Brand TV is bought for reach, frequency and strong programme environments, often on fixed spots in peak. DRTV favours pre-emptible, daytime and off-peak airtime, is judged on cost per response, and is re-cut weekly by station, daypart and spot.

How do you track response from a TV ad?

Combine directly tracked routes (unique phone numbers, TV-only URLs and promo codes) with baseline modelling of website and app traffic, attributing the uplift in the minutes after each spot airs. Minute-level data is essential; hourly totals hide the signal.

What spot length works best for direct response TV?

It depends on the product. Longer spots explain more and can carry a stronger call to action; shorter spots are cheaper because of spot-length factors (a 10″ costs roughly half a 30″). Test lengths against each other and choose on cost per response.

Does DRTV work on BVOD and connected TV?

Yes, but the response looks different. Streaming ads are served to individual viewers rather than in a single broadcast moment, so there is no sharp spike to read. Measurement leans more on matched or exposed-versus-unexposed methods than on minute-by-minute uplift.