AdCritic To Return

jspectre writes "The Ad Age Group has acquired advertising archive AdCritic which was shut down last year and are bringing it back new and improved. They're also looking for comments on what people did and didn't like to help improve the site."

Comments

Finally, not forced to watch sports anymore!

[moldar]

Now I can peacefully go back to pretending that sports don't exist! I never did like sitting through a Super Bowl game waiting for the next new commercial. I say 'Bless you all!' to the folks behind this revival!

They're Back but...

[jhaberman]

It ain't gonna be the same ol' AdCritic... If you read their site, it is going to be geared to advertising professionals only. No general public consumption. Complete with membership subscriptions and everything. Which is all too bad in my book. I enjoyed that site. I sure as hell ain't gonna pay to watch their commercials.

Oh well...

Jason

Re:They're Back but...

[Ford Fulkerson]

I sure as hell ain't gonna pay to watch their commercials.

Something is definitely wrong if that's their business model..

A better idea would be to use the site as a testing ground for new commercials. Let the users watch and rate the clips in the same way as test screenings are used for movies. A service like that could be very valuable for the advertising industry.

Doesn't it say something about society?

[Corvaith]

We're so steeped in our own commercialism now that we watch advertisements for entertainment on their own.

This scares me. Of course, I'm in front of the television for about two hours a week--but I don't get what the attraction is. They're trying to sell you stuff. Most likely, stuff you don't need and frequently stuff you wouldn't want if you knew the whole story behind it.

I guess this is one of those cases where I just smile and nod and go back to reading.

Re:Doesn't it say something about society?

[alanak]

Yes, I think its absolutely ridiculous that advertisements have become a form of entertainment. Of course, /. appeals to the yuppie generation, where materialism means a lot, and hence, advertisment becomes an inherent part of their life.

People here at /. complain about web banners, popups, popunders, etc. but they go giddy when they get to watch TV commericials. Some are willing to pay money to watch advertisements. How does that make any sense? Of course that's not that surprising when you can see t-shirts everywhere advertising nike, armani, ck, etc, for 20-30 bucks a pop. Simply calling a form of advertisement by a different name - fashion - and people are willing to pay.

Check out adbusters for some good critical views on advertisments and over-commercialization.

Re:Doesn't it say something about society?

[vena]

We're so steeped in our own commercialism now that we watch advertisements for entertainment on their own.

actually, i think this says a lot of good things about our society. the ability of the populace to look at advertising as entertainment says two things:

1) advertising is no longer trying to force you to buy anything, instead they are looking for brand recognition - the only form of advertising beyond personal recommendation from a friend that actually works, and probably one of the least intrusive.

2) people know they're trying to sell them something, and can take the entertainment at face value. they're not the moronic fools people like AdBusters would like you to believe.

Re:Doesn't it say something about society?

[jesser]

People here at /. complain about web banners, popups, popunders, etc. but they go giddy when they get to watch TV commericials. How does that make any sense?

I am one of those people. Let me try to explain why I like some ad formats and dislike others.

I like television ads because many are funny, and because my interest in psychology makes it interesting to think about why a particular ad works. I like most web banner ads because they don't get in the way and are sometimes funny. I love Google text ads because they're useful, sometimes more useful than the search results.

On the other hand, I don't like the large square ads Yahoo News uses because they can make it very difficult to read the text around them. Slashdot uses similar square ads, but Slashdot's flash less and are positioned between paragraphs rather than floated next to them, and so are no more annoying than banner ads.

I don't like pop-ups and pop-unders because they require my attention to dismiss, and because they take away the option of "quickly leaving the site because the ads are annoying" available on television and sites without pop-ups. They turn leaving the site into a two-step process, closing the ad and leaving the site. I don't consider "you may open windows on my desktop" to be part of the implied contract of going to a web site.

Re:Doesn't it say something about society?

[babbage]

You know it's funny. I think I see things more or less the way you do -- I've got a TV just because the VCR wouldn't work without one, but I never ever have the compulsion to watch any of the broadcast shows anymore. I'd much rather sit and read a copy of AdBusters :)And yet, my fiance does have some shows that she likes to watch, and I do catch bits and pieces of it.

AND IT ALL SUCKS.

All of it, that is, except for the commercials. It's so strange to me. All the sitcoms are boring, banal ripoffs of one another. All the dramas this year seem to be about people that work with cadavers and, well, there you go. The news is little better than supermarket tabloids (the "news magazines" are probably worse if only because they pretend to be better than what they are), and I'm really starting to find Jay Leno's stubbornly middlebrow idea of entertainment deeply offensive. How can anyone actually enjoy this crap? I used to like Jay Leno, now I just want to strangle the fucker. Another Clinton joke? Let it go man, just fuckin' let it go.

And yet mixed in with the crappy entertainment and quote-unquote news are these little fifteen second masterpieces, with clever writing, brilliant cinematrography and effects, and better music than anything available on the radio. Nevermind the fact that it's all brilliantly crafted to make you CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME -- it also happens to be the only thing on broadcast television that is brilliant. Full stop.

Why isn't there a commercial station on the radio playing the techno & indie rock & jazz you hear in car commercials these days? Why are the only clever examples of wordplay & wittiness (and, again, more good music) in Apple commercials?

I mean, you're right that there's something seriously disturbing about this inversion: the networks always did try to make the shows just interesting enough to keep the audience watching commercials, but now they're making the commercials themselves far more interesting than the shows. I should be rebelling against that, as a card-carrying, Nader-voting, NPR-listening, anti-consumerist liberal. But I can't help it.

If it wasn't for the clever commercials, I'd want to leave the house every time my fiance turns the television on. As it is, I just sit and use the computer or read a book, and look up whenever the commericals come back on. Part of me dies every time this happens ...but part of me likes it, too.

:-/

Re:Doesn't it say something about society?

[babbage]

I know there's some marginally better stuff on cable, but I'm in no way interested enough in watching teevee to shell out fifty bucks a month or more for the privilige. That much doesn't feel like "a little extra" to me -- it's thedifference between $0.00 per year and $500.00 per year or more. I've got a big stack of movies that I know that I like here, so if the urge to watch something comes over me I'll pull one off the shelf.

I'm really not trying to "look down my nose" at anyone here. Just because *I* think "Friends" is the most boring thirty minutes a week doesn't mean that the millions of others that enjoy the show have to change their minds, and I'm fine with that. Most of them would probably find my shelf full of O'Reilly books just as boring, and that's okay with me. But I'm not kidding when I say that I really *do* think that most of the stuff is just ambitiously awful, as if they're trying to outdo each other in terms of how bad these shows can be. I really do think that it's incredibly difficult to be an informed member of society when all you get is the slash & burn pap on broadcast news, and I really do think it's an insult to think that the infotainment on shows like "Dateline" is in any way insightful, investigative, or, well, relevant. Others disagree. That's okay. I don't want everyone to see things my way anyhow.

But my main point remains. Think what you will of the shows, but the commercials is where the real creativity seems to be these days. They have a lot more freedom to do innovative stuff within their "must sell in thirty seconds" format, than the regular shows get to do in 22 or 48 minutes of paint by numbers genre programming. Even if all they do is amuse, that in my opinion is a head start over their competition.....

More bandwidth!

[Steev]

The only thing I can think of to really improve the old AdCritic would be to have given it more bandwidth. It just got severly overburdened most of the time. Especially when the superbowl commercials came out.

I still laugh uncontrollably at the "Damn vikings!" Bud Light ad :)

Re:More bandwidth!

[CaseyB]

It did have more bandwidth, once. Adcritic was great when they were using Akamai. Once they couldn't afford that anymore, it became useless.

This CAN'T bode well for web advertising

[xtal]

I mean, if a wildly successful site in terms of visitors who's CONTENT is nothing but ADS can't make any money, then a lot of people are going to have to pick up their marbles and go home..

Re:This CAN'T bode well for web advertising

[Gogo Dodo]

I don't think AdCritic charged the companies for ads. They video captured it and tossed it up onto their site.

I suspect that companies would not be willing to pay for their placement of their commercials using the old AdCritic format because there is no content control. You got to see every commercial made by a certain company. Companies often have a certain plan where one commercial is seen following another or a theme was dropped (like the talking frogs). AdCritic kept everything.

Additionally, since AdCritic ran every companies' ads, a company's message got lost. For example, I'm sure that McDonald's would not pay for an ad that is placed right next to Burger King's.

Suggestion

[Hemos (editor)]

My major suggestion would be to support more media formats.

Some people cannot or do not choose to use Windows Media Player or Quicktime.

RealMedia isn't that horrible, and it has free players for Linux.

Although, Crossover plugins work nicely for viewing Sorensen-encoded Quicktime files in Linux.

But still, just make sure you guys allow EVERYONE the opportunity to check out some funny commercials :-)

A Site I Visit Several Times A Day

I like ads (no pop ups please)

[sdflkgfljdqshgjkqsfg]

I liked adCritic because living in France, just makes it that much harder to see some good US ads. Of course we also do have a specialised weekly "advertisement" show (that is excellent IMO) that shows the world's best adds or just concentrates on a theme (more of a marketing show)...well to make a long story short, yes, people like watching adds. Why? Because a lot of time and money are put in to produce 30 seconds that are going to keep you riveted to the ad, you have humour, eye-candy, series...
I don't know if I'd actually pay to see ads (who would have thought)... but I'd be real pleased if adcritic were open again to the bigger public.

I'm still scratching my head...

[xtermz]

...over why they even took adcritic down in the first time. Are big corporations so stupid that they cant realize they are getting free publicity? Adcritic could of and should be a marketing execs dream. Mother fuck wasting hordes of money to get time on a large network during a popular show's timeslot... just make it funny, post it to the net, and let the word of mouth do the rest.. i swear, sometimes i think companies that go out of business do so not because of poor sales, but because of stupid,ignorant, closed minded people running them

Re:I'm still scratching my head...

[LoadStar]

They took it down simply BECAUSE it was free publicity for the companies whose ads appeared on AdCritic.com

.

From what I recall, only very briefly right near the very end did the concept of "revenue stream" even remotely cross the minds of anyone associated with the website. From what I remember, AdCritic, free of charge, took the time (labor cost) to digitize television ads; they free of charge hosted the ads on their servers, and free of charge let the hordes of consumers get access to them. That's a lot of free of charges without any return.

Only near the very end did they realize what they should've done in the first place - and what the new buyers haven't quite realized apparently, based on the press release. What they should do is put together a package they can sell to manufacturers - "You have ads. We have a server to host them, and the bandwidth to do so. Hire us, and we'll do the work for you - all you do is add a link to your ad on our website. All this for a small percentage of your television advertising budget."

As an example of the type of website they could have been, look at Apple's Quicktime Movie Trailers website. Apple's selling the service to the movie industry - host your trailer on our site for a fee. Apple gets publicity out of it, through the fact that they get the traffic and the fact that it's all in QuickTime, and the movie industry gets the publicity for their films.

so what if it costs money

[oo7tushar]

Lots of people complaining about the costs...of course it is a worthy cause so I did buy membership at the old AdCritic.

If it's worth it then buy it, ain't that the tr00th?

Also, the advertising professionals section (to which I subscribed) was quite worth it. Giving feedback on the ads (most of which were specatuclar) helped the industry and led to some ads that marketing execs thought were st00pid getting aired (success) and those that were st00pid not getting aired. You're not only helping others you're helping getting sn00ty marketing execs get fired.

poetically speaking

[envelope]

AdCritic was gone
But now it has come again
Get out your wallet