What Is An Infomercial?

By Author: Bruce Hershey
Total Articles: 22
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An infomercial is a kind of TV commercial that focuses on a certain product or service being endorsed. Infomercials usually takes for about thirty minutes of running time, and usually broadcasted outside TV peak hours, which is at late evening. It is a form of direct marketing in which the speaker endorses the product or service to the prospective consumers and clients directly, instead of going through a retail outlet.
Infomercials are long-format TV programs for a product that often times, is not readily available in most stores. The product or the service is available to the consumer or client through a phone number repeatedly flashed on the TV screen. In order to get the interest of the audience, infomercial production companies often involve their other products or services for a fee or at a discounted rate.
In a commercial, the uses and advantages of the product or service are advertised. On the other hand, with a much longer running time and an extended time slot, infomercials often features dialogues with the inventor of the product or the service, interactions with an audience, testimonials from the user ...
... and expert opinions. Infomercials usually have catch phrases, repeated phone number, and discounts for purchases through credit cards.
Infomercials first appeared as the answer to the restrictions of putting an advertisement during regular broadcasts. In the dawn of the TV age, many programs were conceptualized for advertising a certain product, service or company. But eventually, advertisements are cut down into commercial breaks. Paid programming in part returns to the longer format of which earlier video production calgary was adapted to.
The government regulates things that an infomercial production company can and cannot feature in the advertisement, such as disclosures and endorsements that can be made during the airing of the infomercial. These also include a requirement that an endorser, on behalf of the infomercial production company, must actually use the product or do the service while advertising it, as well as the prohibition on making unconfirmed claims, including false scientific researches.
Since infomercials are paid programming, consumers and clients should be very careful about the claims aired. An infomercial production company, for example, can pay actors to exaggerate claim, and can also hire experts to advertise a product or a service falsely.