Lawyers who have advertised on TV for a long time have noticed that it’s not working as well as it used to. Many lawyers have asked me why TV advertising is not what it used to be. I see some similarities with TV advertising to the Yellow Pages.

When the Yellow Pages worked well, there was only one yellow book. Years ago, there was just broadcast TV with just a very few channels. Most of the lawyer advertising was on just one or two channels. Now, there are over 1,000 channels; many different sources; and many different methods of watching TV content.

Years ago, people told me that the Internet would be the end of TV advertising. I told them that my fear was that demand for TV advertising time from online companies would substantially increase and push TV advertising costs higher. Today, there are a great many online businesses which spend much of their advertising budget, if not the bulk of it on TV advertising to bring traffic to their websites.

TV viewers are quite familiar with some of the largest online advertisers, Vonage.com, Monster.com, Ameritrade, Netflix, Scotttrade, LendingTree.com and Ditech.com. In fact, your knowledge of these brands probably emanates from TV advertising.