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

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?

[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 :)

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..

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.

poetically speaking

[envelope]

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