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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."
Shake's 12 minute commercial for Boost Mobile!
OK, so they were taking a shot at product placement in TV shows, but still, damn. I hope everyone at Williams Street got some free phones.
domain combinatorics
While there are obvious disadvantages to this (such as crappier, cheesier scripts), couldn't this be a good thing? I mean, wouldn't you guys like it if commercials were cut down signifigantly? I know that I would.
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hehe. First thing I thought of after reading the blurb...
Nothing for you to see here. BROUGHT TO YOU BY CISCO SWITCHES AND NETWORKING APPLIANCES! Please move along.
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.
sig not found
I suppose it was inevitable really... they'll always find a way to get to us. Here's hoping we never get quite as bad as depicted in "The Truman Show" though. I almost crapped my pants when I watched "I, Robot" and "The Island" and saw all the stuff they were pushing along with the film.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
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?
Those familiar with my anti-copyright ideas know that I've promoted product placement as a partial solution to PVR commercial skipping.
The advertising community is, yet again, far behind. Tivo is so 2001. BitTorrent and the newer anonymous P2P apps take the problem a step farther.
With vidgeeks easily editing out commercials for P2P redistribution (this can be time consuming to be frame perfect), it is only a matter of time before they digitally smear out product placement. A little bit of work and you can nuke logos without the MTV blur.
What will advertisers do next?
My thought is that we'll see video and audio starting and stopping at different offsets. Imagine -- a scene ends with the audio ending but the video continuing. A character can walk off screen for entire seconds after they're finished talking. If Cisco paid to have the audio portion of the ad start before the video is over. P2P editors could nuke this audio.
The video could end before the audio, maybe bringing a logo in before a narration is finished. Still, the video portion could be edited to black.
Pop-up video advertising could be placed like A&E and Bravo do with TB show mentions. In fact, I believe we see more of these mentions to prep us for 3rd party pop-overs. Yet a vidgeek could humorously edit the pop-over to advertise their l33t skills.
So what is the answer?
DRM.
"Frankly Scarlet I don't give a damn... But get some nike air masters and I just might".
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
As I sit here, drinking a DITE COKE , reading slashdot... I'm asking myself, why don't I have a TIVO And if I did have one, which network would I choose to record... HBO ? Hmmm.........
I'm not fat, just big boned...
It's nice to see the revenue battle not taking the form of buying congressmen for once. It's a battle between those who don't view commercials (which means less money for advertising slots), and the need for the television company to make money. The latest move is to include product-placement. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then those tv shows will be doomed (or they'll stop doing it). It is an interesting battle, as it shows the problem of having entertainment for free. I think the internet sidesteps this issue as the cost is much lower, so more people creating the content are willing to be out of pocket. Unfortunately with tv, this just isn't an option because of the large budgets.
It could mean the death of tv as we know it. Although I believe that if it does mean the death of tv, tv shows will continue to live in DVD releases (as the audience directly pays for the product and has been successful).
http://www.cisco.com/now/24/indexIPcommunications. html
Sorry about the quicktime...
Click away...
I want my! I want my! I want my Eee PC!
I don't watch a lot of American television and I was quite confused when, in Tommy Lee Goes To College, the producers blurred out some signs and t-shirts worn by the plebeans. Was this the effect of sponsorship to remove references to competitors? They couldn't all have been offensive (especially the billboards *grin*).
Does the fact that people are using the technology to skip ads not tell the advertisers that, maybe, just maybe, we don't want to see the ads for there crappy product they are trying to pimp? Seems to me that pissing off the majorty of your customers with silly product placements is not the best way to reach the few that do skip your ads. Just my thoughts.
K Man
Something about this still made me feel uneasy. Now I think I know what it is--the problem is that you don't realize you're being advertised-to. In magazines, ads which might be mistaken for articles are supposed to be clearly marked, usually by writing "Advertisement" across the top. Infomercials usually begin with "The following is a paid program." But infomercials are sneaky, sort of like subliminal advertising was supposed to be.
I don't specifically object to paid placement, but I'd like for it to be clear when paid placement is taking place. No idea how to do that without distracting from the show, though.
20 years from now the re-runs are going to look really weird. If they started doing this 20 years ago we'd probably be watching Scooby Doo episodes where Shaggy mentions how comfortable his Dead 70s Brand bell bottoms are. Then again, with modern technology they might start editing old tv shows inserting new scenes to do product placement or just dubbing over them with new brand names.
Wait till the porn industry starts using product placment, it will soon filter down to mainstream media in a more popular way!
<i>"After giving head nothing gets the taste out of my mouth better then mentos, my mouth is fresh and im ready to do the double penetration shot"</i>
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?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Good - Victorias Secret product placement.
Bad - Hemorroid cream product placement.
I'm tired of the networks complaining about loss of ad revenue due to fast forwarding through their ads. I've had a TiVo for going on 5 years now and I have to say that I watch more ads now than I did before.
/.) and not paying too much attention; the TV is just on in the background and I glance up now and then to view it.
Seriously, I don't watch that much TV but what I do watch, I watch multiple times, usually because I'm multitasking doing something else (like posting to
When the comemercial break comes on though, I'll grab the remote and fast forward through the ads. Since TiVo doesn't auto-skip, I watch the whole commercial break, albiet at quadruple speed. I'll even stop it on ads that grab my interest. Once the show comes back on, I resume playback and go back to whatever I was doing.
So really, some company that airs ads in shows that I watch are getting more than their money's worth.
I watched a Korean drama with a friend and I swear the only purpose of the show was to sell the sound track and promote the artists. Every single episode there were 5 songs that would always have to be played no matter what.
So the question isn't "are they whores?"; that's a given. The question is, should they charge more for more unpleasant/degrading services. I think you'll find that your friendly neighborhood hooker charges more for anal than she does for a quick hand-job--why shouldn't these guys do the same? :)
...did a couple going to an advanced screening of the film manage to bump into their friends who had already seen it?
this is my third time reading about it, and i just noticed that.
I didn't mind Cisco's ads on last season's 24. I would rather see the characters using real products like Cisco's IP Phones than some propmaster's incorrect vision of what an IP phone should look like. Ford also sponsors the show and they drive big Ford trucks. Toyota sponsored the DVD preview of Season 5 and you see Jack driving a Toyota. Last season on Smallville, Clark used the red Old Spice deodorant - it was in his locker and on the big banner over the football field.
Product placement is only bad when it's inappropriate and doesn't flow with the show. I sure wouldn't want to see Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brien discussing Kotex Tampons or Vagisil cream as he's about to waste some terrorists. Or President Palmer plugging Uncle Ben's rice at a press conference. But if they are looking for a USB flash card containing Top Secret information, I don't mind them mentioning SanDisk.
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
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
I don't see the problem. One hour of the Big Brother contestents drinking Coke (tm), sitting on Ikea (tm) sofas and wearing Gap (tm) hoodies could pay enough to fill the remaining 23 hours with fresh Simpsons episdoes.
I quit!
um... did you see I, Robot? now THAT is hardcore product placement. *goes to buy Converse All-Stars Vintage 2004 online to get shipped by Fed-Ex*
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.
A few years ago, I decided to specifically watch for product placement, so I tend to notice it enough to make note of it. In general, I keep an eye out for shots that contain an identifying product logo when the logo adds nothing to the story. Some placement, like the Mc Donalds placement in The Fifth Element, are blatant and hard to miss. In I Robot, Wil Smith's "retro" possesions (shoes, music player), arent so subtle. The intrusive ads in Minority Report are odd, they are blatant, but the mechanism for the advertisement is relevant to the plot. Others are easier to miss; Jackie Chan movies seem to feature a Pepsi logo of some sort more often then not.
Even good product placement is not too hard to spot if you look for it. In general, if manage to notice that one person has, for example, a Nokia phone, then its a safe bet that every other phone will be the same brand. The car driven by the principle character is a favorite target for product placement. Soft drinks are most often one or the other.
24 Usually handles product placement pretty decently, but I concede that they do a suprising amount of it. The placement for Cisco was perhaps the most blatant, but not quite jarring enough for me to make too much of it. 24 Product placement tends to encompass the following products (that I have noticed),
Computers: Alot of CTU equipment is Dell. Season 4 had a few Alienware laptops as well.
Cell Phones: I think Jack uses a Nokia phone.
Cars: A great deal of Ford SUV's. It appears that Season 5 may use Toyota placements, based on the teaser from the Season 4 box set.
I consider bad product placement to be any sort of product placement where the product in question becomes the focus of the camera instead of the story at hand. 24 Usually does ok, the Cisco placement aside. They do alot of it, but its done as tastefully enough that it does not annoy me.
END COMMUNICATION
END COMMUNICATION
FX is the worst offender. I was watching Disclosure once, bad enough, and the fucking Nip/Tuck ad at the bottom of the screen was metal on metal.
Circumcision is child abuse.
When I lived in the USA (British native for reference), I found your TV unbearable. Adverts popped up at random timings and without any kind of warning. Here in the UK, you can actually plan aroud the commercial breaks - it's a half-hour program, you get a few minutes after quarter of an hour. Just right to nip to the loo or make some tea.
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.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Why the Hell would somebody in the future be so desperate to get hold of some boring old trainers from some random year in the past? This happened at the very start and was outstandingly obvious. Pretty much destroyed any benefit of the doubt I'd managed to cling onto before seeing the film.
Don't forget the Audi product placement too. I hope the director got a nice cut of the bribe for that to compensate him for his loss of self-respect. The film might as well have been a very long advert. This is the director who did Dark City, too. Shame on you Alex Proyas! SHAME ON YOU! What excuse do you have for this?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
like in Germany. Does this mean they will not be able to export those shows and thus losing a lot of revenue or will they just try it anyway, get caught and banned? Or will these countries get edited versions, 70% shorter... ;-)
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
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.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Over here in the UK the mobile phone company orange runs movie ads in cinemas.
The basic plot of which is a bunch of marketing types from orange proceed to ruin a movie, with product placement, ringtone tie-ins and general marketing bollocks.
The punch line being "don't let a mobile ruin your movie"; A public service announcement to turn off mobile phones in the cinemas.
Although these are satirical ads, you just know that the writers are basing the marketing droids on real people/events.
Most people who when they see great art get a touch of enlightenment, a few weasles however want to use it as a method of selling you stuff!
Viral Videos & Ads site has one (Metamorphosis) of the AXE commercials. Are there any more out there?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
OK, so the problem is that adverts have become so intrusive in programming that the audience will spend hundreds of dollars on a device to avoid them. And their solution is "add more adverts which reduce the quality of the shows which attract our audience"? What a great bit of creative thinking.
I don't know how anyone watches US TV, anyway. I find the less than 10 minutes an hour of adverts on commercial channels here (UK) annoying enough and from the constant "fade-to-black and recap a little" you see in US programmes like Lost or ER, TV in the US is adverts with the odd show crammed in between them.
Television's primary product for sale is not the junk featured in ads, it's YOUR eyeballs. Where do networks get their primary source of revenue? From selling your eyeballs upstream to corporations. The TV shows are just crummy hooks to get your eyeballs for a little while. Is there some level of art, acting, or writing involved? Sure, a little. But the VAST majority of TV programming is happy, blinky stuff to keep you hooked for just a few more minutes.
I admit that I like plugging in for a little brain-nap myself, but don't forget there ARE other forms of entertainment. I mean, let's not elevate the so-called art of television to some level that we think they're above blatent product placement.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
If i had ever bought a DVD with a 2 minute forced viewing ad or warning, i'd take the dvd back complaining that it didnt work in my dvd player, and get another movie for the same price, then off i go to the pirate bay to pick up the movie WITHOUTH the ad.
Even without Tivo, we've gotten to the point where we just tape everything on the VCR and watch it later. Usually, I'd rather watch tv on the weekends, but most of the shows I watch are during the week. So I just tape them and watch them later. This has been possible for 20 years. I don't know why it hasn't been a problem before. I think that tv shows are just looking for an excuse to put out more ads. I mean, I don't know "that many" people with tivos. certainly not a big percentage compared to those who tape shows and watch them later on their vcr.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This isn't even "product placement," it's "logo placement."
In the interests of fairness, I must point out that we are a happy Apple family.
Doh.
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
Last season I started to watch the Shield on FX, after having watched the previous season on my computer by bittorrenting the episodes a day or two after they were released, and I found that the downloaded episodes made for a 1000% better TV-watching experience. No sliders, no moving graphics in the bottom of the screen, no station ID logos, and higher quality than my analog TV.
Someone should clue the local TV stations into a phrase: "value added." They have none. Right now they exist only because they have a monopoly on content (at least at the level of effort that most non-technical users are willing to expend). But as that monopoly breaks down and viewers start to get flooded with content from other places, they're going to be in real trouble.
I still watch a few TV shows, mostly as a social thing with friends, but if it weren't for the fact that we just enjoy getting together once a week and ordering pizza, I'd probably just cancel everything but my basic cable subscription and watch tv shows when they hit NetFlix.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I agree, and it's absolute worst when those sliders happen during a fast paced game like basketball. Or the last two minutes of a football game and the score is tied and we have to listen to who's f-ing who on an "All New Desperate Houswives."
It makes me sick. At least take a tip from Google and target your adds
Next thing you know I am going to start seeing editted episode of Star Trek: TNG.
Worf: Captain, message coming in over *obvious dubbing moment* AT&T.
Picard: Patch it through.
*AT&T logo appears on view screen before person starts talking*
I think that will be when things hit the ultimate low. Well either that, or when they start putting product placement in shows where they should not be.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Every time I turn on the damn TV, I get bombarded with people telling me that I really DO need a new home, that the more green pills I pop the better, and that I should try various feminine hygine products or risk severe discomfort (not to mention the news which is half an hour of government ministers lining their pockets at our expense, and dozens of innocent people dying horiffically every day).
The worst part is, there isn't even any shows left to make it worth putting up with this crap. Who the hell wants to watch yet another rip-off of Everybody Wishes Raymond Would Piss The Hell Off?
It's no wonder I haven't turned my TV on in over a year. If there's a show I want to watch, I either download it off the net, or buy it on DVD. The constant force-feeding of ads and bullshit have completely turned me off TV. I feel at least some satisfaction in knowing that they won't be getting any advertising revenue because of me.
But if they start putting ads straight into shows... well, I suppose I'll just have to read more. Who knows, maybe this is a blessing in disguise!
We're geeks... We're the sorcerers of the modern-day world. --
I remember the late 80's.
We just watched our G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons.
(I guess some people watched My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake.)
Those commercials even had commercials.
(Even though the commercial interruptions usually were for the same toys.)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
I predict that within the next year we'll see stations running a constant advertising crawler. They'l probably shrink the size of the actual content area and fill the margins with advertising, much like CNN does with its stock ticker, weather, etc. Ha! Try to skip that! I further predict that within another year this practice will be commonplace and used on the majority of channels.
In fact, this may drive wide-screen format for shooting new shows. The shows will be shot in 16:9 and broadcast full-screen, with the ads taking up the remaining space. And no, those of you with wide-format TVs won't be able to just crop out the ads. Some shows will be broadcast with the content at the top of the screen and ads at the bottom. Some will have the content at the bottom and ads at the top. Some will have content in the middle and ads both top and bottom. And some will even flip the ad and content panes mid-show. If you want to see the shows ad-free you'll have to buy the DVDs. (Or, of course, download pirated copies that have already been cropped.)
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Run the commercials less often, maybe only once per half hour. Run fewer total commercials. But don't server everybody the SAME commercials. Make part of the "deal" for getting the PVR be that you will be asked to fill out a questionaire. You can leave it blank, or lie, but you will then be served irrelavant commercials. You will still get 2 min per half hour no matter what you answer, so you might as well answer honestly. You can skip them if you want, so it's up to the commercial writers to make sure you don't WANT to skip them. It actually INCREASES the number of ads the station can sell while DECREASING the ad time each individual gets. And since they can give real stats on the number of people they are reaching with each ad, they can vary the price of the ad accordingly. Almost like "pay per click" on the web. Add some interactivity to the ad so 1) people will bother to watch and interact with it, 2) you get some real stats as to whether they DID watch and interact with it.... The technology is all there. Use it. A TiVo is a PC! Even the crappy Explorer 8000 that the cable companies give away is a PC or sorts.
To be sure.
I'm curious, though, (I, too, buy almost-too-exhorbitantly-priced, legal DVDs) whether the cheap pirated DVDs also come with the imposing FBI/Interpol Warning message on them, too? You know, for authenticity's sake:)? I'm sure the producers ands buyers get a smile out of them, too.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Actually, I'd argue that iRobot had commercials in it. I noticed that ALL of the product placement happens within specific blocks, right next to each other. Every now and then they take a break from the action to tell you all about cars, shoes and package delivery. Then no mention until 30 minutes later, at which all three products are seen again.
Yeah, product placement really galls me. After a long day at work, I come home and just want to unwind with a sitcom and a cold Budweiser, king of beers. But then I'm subjected to a bunch of product placement. I swear, it's enough to make me need an Advil, which is recommended by four out of five doctors. So instead of watching a sitcom, I go for a long ride in my Lexus, with its roomy interior, six-way adjustable seating, and powerful V6 engine.