Lawyers who have advertised on TV for a long time have noticed that it’s not working as well as it used to, and many lawyers have asked me why TV advertising is not what it used to be.

I see some similarities between TV advertising to the Yellow Pages.

When the Yellow Pages worked well, it was the only yellow book. Then there were many.

Years ago, there were up to six network channels that were commonly watched. Most of the lawyer advertising was on just one or two TV channels. Some TV shows had almost nothing but TV commercials for lawyers on Jerry Springer.

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.