Infomercials Vs Commercials – What is the Difference?

There are several misconceptions running around the truth about the differences between infomercials vs commercials. It’s not uncommon for people who are unfamiliar with the technicalities of the TV advertising industry to get confused with these two. So, it’s important to shed light and provide a clear understanding of the issue.

Infomercials and commercials are both connected to the TV advertising business. However, there are some extents to which only one or the other is able to reach. And, that is what we’re going to discuss here.

Let’s begin the introductions with their definitions, and we’ll move on to listing down their notable differences.

What Is A Commercial?

For starters, the term “commercial” comes from the word “commerce”, which involves the general sense of business activities in terms of buying and selling. It engages with trading strategies that focus on setting your position in the market.

A commercial, therefore, is the generic type of endorsement in the advertising industry.

Your ultimate target is to gain profit from your commercial strategy. The main question is, how do you do that?

Here is where advertising comes in, but it doesn’t necessarily mean TV commercials alone. Commercials happen to include the radio and other advertisement types in many forms.

Types and Forms of Commercials

Paid advertisements on TV and radio are the two most common types of commercial advertising. Still, it also uses other popular types of paid announcements on paper flyers, directories, newspapers, magazines, and billboards. The latest and quite advanced form of commercials uses online digital technology, such as social media marketing, search engine marketing, and email marketing.

Commercials also come in different forms of creatives. In the olden times, people use black and white images on newspapers, billboards, and flyers, paired with words strategically crafted to catch the consumers’ attention and convince them to buy a product or subscribe to services. Now, even billboards flash video commercials. The internet is flooded with ads on web pages to regularly remind you of the things you want to buy, despite the fact that you have no need for them. The art of persuasion is ever-changing even to the point of entertainment.

Basically, commercials are paid announcements that promote business brands, products, and services as a form of investment for greater profitability.

This brings us to the question of what differs a commercial from an infomercial.

What Is An Infomercial?

The combination of the words “information” and “commercial” resulted in the formation of the term “infomercial”, which means informative commercials.

Originally, infomercials are long-form advertisements on stand-alone television programs that are featured live, usually after the primetime hours of TV entertainment, which essentially means past midnight. These in-between hours are what used to be the non-existing and non-profiting gaps for the TV industry. However, with the development of infomercials as a form of direct response marketing, the advertisers in the TV industry were able to close that gap.

One unique advantage of infomercials is its ability to entice consumers to make an immediate direct purchase. As said by Brett Jensen, director of data partnerships at iSpot.tv., “They disrupt an existing vertical possibly weighed down by brick-and-mortar stores and middleman vendors.”

Business-wise, it’s a good call for advertisers.

Infomercials rely on persuasive Call-to-Actions after lengthy attempts to provide all the information that the audience needs to know. Advertisers on infomercials aim to sell their own products, and auctioning them directly to the consumers opens the door to a higher profit margin, something that is ideal for entrepreneurs.

Latest Advantages of Infomercials

As time went by, infomercials also had to keep up with technology. They’re no longer limited to “after-primetime” hours. Some stations exclusively air recorded infomercials round-the-clock. But, of course, receiving real-time purchases remains in the procedure.

Infomercials are also made available on the internet in the form of videos. These videos are created in the same format shown on TV. They’re basically produced in the same manner. Infomercial videos can be found on social media channels and websites, which you can easily find through search engines. The discovery of different mediums extended the capability of direct television response (DRTV) in advertising products through infomercials.