Slashdot Mirror
Pop-up Ads Coming to A TV Near You
Muddie writes "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that television execs and advertising agencies think product placement and the 30 second commercial spot are not getting the respect they deserves from us consumers, so in order to combat us ignoring them, there will be pop-up ads taking up the lower quarter of your screen during normal programming. Not only that, but the ads will run during relevant portions of the programming (see a guy shaving in the mirror, get a pop-up ad from a razor company). Do "They" think we just don't see enough advertising in a day? If you aren't busy throwing things through your television yet, you can read the article over here (with no pop-up ads)."
I'm glad I live in a country with advert-free TV.
I've been without a TV for about 8 years now and it's been really nice. Oh sure, I can't chuckle along with my coworkers about last night's Friends episode, but somehow I still get by. The best part is that after coming home from work I actually have to find something constructive to do with my time instead of wasting the next 5 hours watching sitcoms. Toss your TV. You'll like the results.
I can understand why advertisers are looking at doing this. I for one haven't watched a commercial in months since I've bought my TiVo. We got some new Dell PC's in the office a while back and somebody was joking around "Dude you're getting a Dell" and I had no idea what the hell he was talking about until he told me about the commercial :) Of course if it's during the programming I won't have much of a choice to watch it or not, that's just how the advertisers want it.
many people record shows and skip the commercials, having pop up ads would effectively force you to watch ads no matter what, as long as it was a part of the broadcast signal.
I bet I can think of a way around it.
*click*
Look! No ads!
no biggie. and maybe that'll cut down on in-between commercials.
Don't be ridiculous. Can you honestly see a TV exec saying "We had $200 million in interstitial ad revenue in 2002, but since we've picked up an additional $80 million in pop-up ad revenue we can afford to accept $80 million less of interstitial advertising." Big business is after big money, and they don't care how hard they have to annoy consumers to get it. Your only option will be to turn off the TV or turn the channel.
The funny thing about all of this is that the advertisers feel that people don't give commercials the "respect and attention" that they think they deserve. That's because the consumers don't think that commercials are generally worthy of respect or attention. They started doing interstitial advertising and people started flipping channels because they don't want to watch ads. They increased the amount of interstitial advertising and people switch channels and stay longer or they buy a Tivo to filter it all out. I wonder why? Oh yeah, that's right. People don't like advertising.
So now they want to adopt the Internet's most annoying, least respected and most ignored form of advertising: the pop-up. That will get them the "respect and attention" that their products deserve. Nevermind that people have already learned to ignore the popup windows on their PCs, which should greatly ease the transitition to ignoring the popups in their TV programming.
The only real difference between the Internet pop-ups and TV popups is that the TV pop-ups have the potential to be much more annoying. The first time that they pop up and block something important (the text of a suicide note in that mystery show, the car spinning out during the Indy 500, the outfielder failing to catch the fly ball that results in the game-winning run, etc) there will be ten kinds of hell to pay from every direction. Do the advertising agencies honestly think that by cramming themselves down our throats we will become more enamored of advertising? No, we'll just start watching channels that don't advertise with popups, if we watch TV at all.
The sad thing about this is that it is truly unnecessary. Actual commercials in general have been getting better over the years. Many of them are funny, some even quite entertaining. Adcritic.com built a web site that's sole reason to exist was to provide commercials for download over the net, and they were crushed by the demand and folded. What that says to me is that even though the average commercial is derided and ignored, people will go out of their way to see entertaining advertising.
If ad agencies made their commercials more entertaining then I wouldn't mind watching them so much. Ideas like the product placements in Survivor work well. You see the bag of Doritos, you see 7 starving contestants competing for the bag of Doritos, and you see the winning contestant chowing through them like they were ambrosia. Next time you get the munchies you think of Doritos. Advertising via sponsorship seems to work well too, at least in auto racing. Race fans are some of the most loyal consumers in the world, so long as their product is sponsoring their favorite driver or team. When choosing between two roughly equivalent products, I always choose the one that sponsors auto racing (if there is one), even if it is slightly more expensive. It makes sense to support those companies that support your interests, and I'm not the only sports fan that thinks that way.
It's interesting that TNT claims to have already trialed such a pop-up system last year during a showing of "Father of the Bride II" and didn't receive any phone calls complaining. What kind of ratings they got for that showing? How many people switched channels when they started seeing the ads? Does TNT realize that 90% of lost customers don't say anything about being unhappy before switching to a competitor? Would there have been a more significant response had they tested these ads during a more popular show? Just how many people actually tune in to watch a second-rate sequel that's seven years old on a second-rate cable network?
I guess in summary, there is a way to advertise effectively. If someone is thinks that pop-ups are effective then they obviously haven't figured it out yet.
This came from http://www.blindwino.com/bigwino.html.
4-bit adder: A snake made of 1's and 0's
Of course, most people don't have anything other to occupy their time these days anyway, so they might as well watch their programming in all of it's purely marketing glory.
Heh, did anyone else see Minority Report? What brilliant irony, a film with tons of stuff showing how scary, invasive, and annoying advertising could become, is a film laced with product placement from beginning to end...
How long till the moon has a Pepsi or a Nike logo staring down at all of us. We the people, we the consumers.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Just how much did Costco pay you to write this?