TiVo Causes Increase in Product Placement

ndansmith writes "Wired has got an article on how TiVo and other 'ad-skipping technologies' have caused an upsurge in product placements on network television shows. The 84% increase in product placements on TV over the last year has drawn protests from both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. An example from the article: 'In a recent episode of the NBC series Medium, writers had to work the movie Memoirs of a Geisha into the dialogue three times because of a deal the network made with Sony earlier in the season. They even had the characters go on a date to an early screening of the movie and bump into friends who had just viewed Geisha to tell them how good it was.' Readers may also remember a controversial Cisco Systems product placement on Fox's 24."

Comments

Artistic integrity?

[mat catastrophe]

From the article:

"some writers are putting up a fight, demanding more pay in exchange for scripting product plugs into their shows ."

So, in other words, it isn't like they are concerned about becoming shills...only that they aren't paid enough to be whores.

It seems kind of pathetic to do that.

[Antony-Kyre]

Maybe it's time for television to evolve into something else. How much cheaper is our current cable television due to advertisements? How much would it cost if we stripped the ads out of the shows and just paid more for cable access?

Re:Good or Bad?

[servognome]

I mean, wouldn't you guys like it if commercials were cut down signifigantly?

Not at the price of hurting the actual show. I can buy DVDs and not worry about commercials, or just go get food during commercial breaks. Product placement doesn't give you those options.

Real Solution

[oGMo]

The real solution is so simple, it may be beyond the grasp of marketers: make advertisements worth watching.

It's simple. Why do I skip commercials? They're annoying, loud, repetitive, gaudy, mindless. I don't want to watch them, and the producer believes I won't be watching them (I wonder why?), so they scream and shout to get my attention.

So make a commercial that's funny, witty, beautiful. And don't play it every commercial break. Make something I want to see again, and instead of skipping it, I'll take advantage of the TiVo and watch it again.

Such a thing is possible: such commercials already exist. They've few and far between, but we've probably all seen at least one or two. It's possible. If the existing ad agencies can't come up with them, find new ones. I bet there are a thousand independent filmmakers out there who could come up with 30 second clips that fit this bill on half the budget they usually spend.

This is the real solution, one that doesn't involve literally forcing us to watch with DRM and legislation. Which is going to alienate people? Making something they desire, or making it illegal to avoid something they don't?

Re:Real Solution

[The Man]

The real solution is so simple, it may be beyond the grasp of marketers: make advertisements worth watching.

You're approaching this from the wrong direction: making advertisements worth watching is an action to be undertaken by the advertisers and their customers. This presumes they are the people with the problem. They aren't; they're making plenty of money already; PVRs and other changes in the market are crimping their ability to make more money, but they're doing fine as it is. Being greedy isn't a "problem" for the greedy individual but rather a never-ending series of opportunities to make more money at your expense. Your comment assumes that finding one way to solidify or increase the revenue stream is sufficient but in fact the media companies are satisfied only when they exhaust all possible such schemes. So in fact the viewer is the one with the problem; without a PVR you have to watch more ads today than ever before, and even with a PVR you get less content than ever before. Either way, you're going to get more product placement as well, because even if the advertisers made "advertisements worth watching" and no one ever edited them out, you can bet that to sustain their revenue growth the advertising agencies and media companies will continue to increase the number of impressions they can sell per 30 minutes of airtime; having more effective advertisements just allows them to charge more, which is great, but they aren't getting their money's worth until every possible second of airtime is sold somehow to someone. The content is the worm, the ads are the hook, and you are the fish. No fisherman cares how good the worm is as long as it covers the hook well enough to tempt the fish. Fish seem willing to overlook a giant, flaming-orange hook so long as it contains the tiniest fragment of long-dead worm or worm substitute, and TV viewers, who live longer than fish and seem to develop a tolerance to "hooks", are no different. The media companies know this and that, as a fish, er, viewer, sucks.

So there are actually two solutions, one which is realistic and one which is not. The unrealistic solution calls for a contract made between viewers and content producers for a certain amount of ad-free content in exchange for a certain amount of money - the way cable TV was originally set up, in fact. This is unrealistic because, as happened with cable TV, the media companies, never satisfied with merely making a tidy profit, realised that you'll pay just as much for TV with ads as without, so they can actually make money both ways. So much for that. We're left with the REAL SOLUTION that actually works and is guaranteed not to require watching any kind of TV ad, ever, and as a side bonus penalises the greedy bastards who are forcing the issue: DON'T WATCH TELEVISION AT ALL. There's no law (yet) requiring you to consume what the media companies produce. The worm fragments are small, not especially tasty nor healthy, and in virtually all cases unattainable without being hooked anyway. You'll find after a few weeks of altered evening routine that you don't even miss them, and you'll do a boon for your own mind, the economy, and our civilisation's collective future just by not doing something. Why wait? You can solve your problem right now, without any help from anyone, and all you have to do is not do something that seems to be causing you a lot of grief anyway. It's easy, it's free, and it takes no time at all. What better solution could you seek?

Pay per re-run?

[ChrisKnight]

With a regular television show the commercials are inserted by the local affiliate as the show is being broadcast. In this way the commercials can be localized for the viewing audience. So, if you watch a five year old television show the commercials are current and not frozen in time from five years back. Now the 'commercials' are a fixed part of the content, and it will not be possible to extract them later.

But, this begs me to wonder... Advertisers pay for each time a commercial is run. With this new model will they find themselves having to pay a small fee every time a show is aired as a re-run?

-Chris

Re:Good or Bad?

[strider44]

In my humble opinion, there's bad product placement (see I Robot) but there's also good product placement as well (see Blade Runner). I hate it when advertisers force writers to write their product in the script then portrey it as part of the story, but I don't mind at all having a writer think "OK we have a futuristic setting where I want ads here" and then cutting a deal with the corperations for product placement there.

Even having a car in there where it doesn't matter which car it is, I don't mind them giving the car to the highest bidder, but having the actors say "nothing drives like a Ford!" while they're driving it makes me cringe. Basically as long as it's at the writers convenience it's good, but when it's at the advertisers convenience it's bad.

Re:Quite frankly,

[symbolic]

This might not be their biggest problem (TiVO). Networks seem to have tapped into this mentality that tries the patience of its viewers every step of the way. It's not just the commercials any more. Now it's having to endure visual clutter like the station ID logo, and these rediculous sliders that zip in and out at the bottom of the screen just after we've already been subject to four or more commercials.

I've found this so annoying in fact, that I've started to look at alternative forms of distraction. Podcasts have grown to fill that niche. They're great- they are personal, it's easy to connect with the producers, and they are/can be eductional and/or informative. Best of all, there are few if any commercials, and NO ANNOYING LOGOS OR SLIDERS. That's gets my vote hands down.

Re:And the winner is...

[lysergic.acid]

i think the ratio of truly funny commercials to complete crap ones is pretty low. wouldn't you rather be watching the actual programming that had you watching that channel in the first place?

it's kinda like, yea, once in a while you might see something entertaining while sitting in traffic, but do you really wanna sit in traffic all day long just so you can catch those rare moments?

Re:Quite frankly,

[ComaVN]

I'm hoping that it doesn't spread like trailers on DVDs is starting to. I bought a DVD recently and up came trailers for other DVDs the company marketing people thought I might like. Will definitely be keeping an eye out for which company releases the next film I might be tempted to buy. Same applies to the two-minute piracy warning - I paid for the DVD. I am NOT their target audience.

That pisses me off, too. I think it's part of a secret plot to make pirated dvds actually more attractive (ignoring the price) than the real thing. I'm not sure how the movie industry expects to profit from this though.