TV Station Asks If I Want My Website Encoded

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TV Station Asks If I Want My Website Encoded

narsticle

7:57 pm on Aug 13, 2007 (gmt 0)

I am running some ads on a national TV station. The station asked "Do you want your website URL encoded so we can track results." Does anyone know what that means or how that could be possible. The TV rep couldnt explain it.

Thanks In Advance.

Duskrider

8:37 pm on Aug 13, 2007 (gmt 0)

My guess would be what they're asking is if you want a special address advertised for television so you know that visitors are from the tv ad.

Say you're promoting www.example.com.
You get some direct type in traffic there, but you have no way of knowing if that traffic came from the tv ads or not, so you don't really know if they're effective.

Encoding it would be advertising an address like:
www.example.com/specialoffer

Then on that page you can track who comes from the television advertising, since the tv ad is the only place you advertise that specific address.

That's a guess. :)

LifeinAsia

8:58 pm on Aug 13, 2007 (gmt 0)

The station asked "Do you want your website URL encoded so we can track results." ... The TV rep couldnt explain it.

Never a good sign when the sales person can't even explain what they're trying to sell! :)
My guess is the same as Duskrider's.

narsticle

9:05 pm on Aug 13, 2007 (gmt 0)

that was my guess as well, but why not just call it creating a unique URL? They arent actually encoding anything using that method.

Duskrider

9:21 pm on Aug 13, 2007 (gmt 0)

Heh Heh.

Come on down!
Visit www.example.com/index.php%3Fid=television%26ad=myad%26display=true

Probably wouldn't get much business.