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Philips Patents Technology to Force Ad Viewing
An anonymous reader writes "According to New Scientist, Philips has filed a patent for technology to force viewers to watch the ads in a program. Basically they plan to add extra flags to the Multimedia Home Platform that would stop controls from working until the ads are finished." From the article: "Philips' patent acknowledges that this may be 'greatly resented by viewers' who could initially think their equipment has gone wrong. So it suggests the new system could throw up a warning on screen when it is enforcing advert viewing. The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts."
When ads are on I go read articles on /.
Do you see what I did there?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hard to resent something you will never buy.
A TV that won't let me turn it off when it catches fire sounds great !
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
a tv that realizes you've gotten up to get a sandwich and replays the commercials when you return.
MY GOD, THIS IS PROGRESS?!!?
Just start a lottery, where the winner gets to beat the piss out of the guy who thought of "forced advertisement".
A sure winner.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
the next step is to simply have metallic arms come out of your chair, pin your arms down, peel your eyeballs open, and moisturize those pupils for 3 minutes.
"when you fall in a bottomless pit you die of starvation."
...if they patent this, then nobody *else* will do it, and than we can all just go and not buy Philips TVs.
Basically they plan to add extra flags to the Multimedia Home Platform that would stop controls from working until the ads are finished.
DVDs did that years ago and I've hated it the whole time. Especially after I've waited for it for previous viewings of a movie, and I'ev already decided to or not to buy that thing or watch that other movie coming soon (ie. 4 years ago) to a theater or DVD near me. Is this prior art, or do they have a loophole aroung it? Though I wouldn't mind if the threat of lawsuit over such a patent prevented any media distributors from doing any mroe of this really annoying crap.
My desire to buy a Philips product ever again in my lifetime just plummetted to zero. Nice work, marketing department!
Just off the top of my head, it seems unlikely that consumers are going to come beating on Phillips door to get this marvelous new invention, but I guess they can always sell it to cable companies for incorporation in set top boxes so the consumer doesn't get a choice. And I suppose that eventually, they can 'persuade' somebody to introduce legislation to require TV's to include this 'feature'. It wouldn't be the first time.
I hate the forced adverts on DVD. what pisses me off even more is when they aren't even advertising products, they're just forcing me to watch their "copying DVDs is piracy and is the same as mugguing someone so don't do it" bullshit. on a DVD I've just fucking bought anyway.
stuff like this, like computer game protection, just makes it easier as well as cheaper to get things illegally.
Do something the victim hates and make them pay you to stop.
It's called "extortiom".
that's it I'm going back to books.
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
Philips acknowledges that (etc, etc)
Well, duh. But not because I think my equipment is broken.. because the company that made it is clearly looking to get support from the people who stand to make money from all those (shiatty) commercials I'm forced to watch.
So Philips wants to make it easier for broadcasters to force me into watching ads for stuff I won't buy anyway, and then they've the audacity to attempt to chalk up their user's (inevitable) complaints to 'improperly working equipment'.So we need to watch more crap, and we're stupid to boot.
Har-de-har-har.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
You clearly have not read the patent. There was something about chains, locks, and first born children in there.
Remember the episode where Marge asks for the tv producers to ban Itchy and Scratchy?
Suddenly all the kids "wake up" like the Awakenings movie, and begin playing outside.
_IF_ this product is "successfully" imposed on the people, we'll see more and more people go away from the TV into the internet / books / games / radio / whatever.
"Philips' patent acknowledges that this may be 'greatly resented by viewers'" I don't think resented is a strong enough word. Maybe loathed, but even that, I don't think, is strong enough.
...Anybody remember those Magnavox TVs that actually detected when a commercial was playing and attenuated the volume to make them less annoying? I believe it detected the audio compression technique that commercials use to seem louder than the actual program or something like that. Now that was technology for the consumer.
And I am not being facetious. I can't wait for them to start adding flags identifying commercials to TV signals. One day later I bet there is a plugging to MythTV that perfectly edits your recordings to be commercial free.
What with Digital TV lock-ins & broadcast flags I have no intention of ever buying mass market cable equipment again anyway. In the future all of my TV watching will be downloads anyway. This will just make it easier to get commercial free programming.
I hope people buy these TVs like hot cakes, cause I won't.
I'm not watching porn ! *Clicks button desperately*
I don't think you get it. You're FORCED to watch the advertisements.
Part of this system will be eye-instruments similar to the ones used in A Clockwork Orange that keep the lids of your eyes fully open and staring directly into the screen. There will be no way of skipping the ads nor averting your eyes away from the ads.
Of course, for a small fee you can avoid all of this.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Pretty soon it will be cheaper and less annoying to go see movies in the theater.
I guess I'll have plenty of former TV time to perfect my Civilization IV skills. Or I could write another book.
But Civ IV first.
In regards to radio, have you noticed tha channel surfing is nearly as affective at avoiding commercials with Clear Channel owned stations. In my neck of the world, Clear Channel stations seem to be in sync with one another in regards to commercial breaks and quite often play the same one at given moment. Okay, back to the topic.
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Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
When I buy something, I buy it for one very simple purpose: to gain exclusive control over it.
If Philips wants to keep control over a TV or other device, that's fine. Give it to me, loan it to me, and I can accept that the owner keeps control over it - and I'm not the owner. But we have a technical term for selling property without turning over control, and that term is 'Fraud'.
When I sold my previous home, I surrendered control over it to the new owner. I no longer control how that house is used, who may come and go, and which TV shows may be watched in the living room.
It looks like Philips wants to pretend to sell me a device, while keeping control over it. That's not a sale, and presenting it as one is a clear case of fraud.
I wholeheartedly support this idea.
Forget muting commercials, this is TV - when the ad break comes on, will I be able to switch channels?
What about the advertising on the other channels that I'm missing.
What if I am flicking around the channels (from a sanctioned spot) and happen upon a commercial, will I not be able to continue to the next channel?
liqbase
To patent the electrification of the fridge handle and the toilet seat during commercials...
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
It seems likely that we have until the patent expires before non-Phillips products can use this technology without paying licensing fees. :-) Also means no open source implementations for about 17 years...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Which is why people like Sirius or iPods: commercial free. Hey, there's a concept that works! No ads + pay for content = happy customers + profit.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
The best thing about any restrictive technology is that it opens up the opportunity to break or work around the restrictions. If it's not region-free DVD players or modchips for your Playstation, it'll be HDMI dongle hacks and Philips adbusters.
It doesn't matter what they do, the only people who really gain from restrictive techs are the shady people who sell the hacks and modchips.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts."
I already pay a monthly $80 "fee" for TV, does that count for anything?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I think I'm going to file a patent that requires you to watch the Super Bowl. No longer will you be allowed to skip through the game and just view the commercials...
I'm not fat, just big boned...
"Warning: Phillips electronics engineers are clueless asspirates. Their marketing weasels are worse. While you're watching this shit, they're busy thinking up the next stupid-ass idea."
Also known as extortion.
Phillips was just not thinking clearly when they invented this. There will be a flag at the start of commercials, and another at the end, to tell the anti-skip system when to activate. Just how long do you think it will be before someone figures out how to use the flags to start and stop the fast-forward button? This system of flags would be just as effective at automatically skipping ads.
The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts.
Pay a fee to go back to skipping adverts. I assume that this would be money paid to the content provider, who would in turn give a cut to all companies whose commercials were skipped. So the net result is that even though no commercial for Coca-Cola or what have you was seen, and no Coca-Cola product was used in the TV show, Coca-Cola still makes a profit off of the viewing of this show.
It's win-win for the corporation, and absurd for the consumer. If the corporation's ad gets seen, they get more money through traditional marketing routes. Now, in places where their ad DOESN'T get seen, they get money too. We are effectively unconditionally throwing money at megacorps.
My MythTV will be able to remove commercials much faster once there's a flag showing where the ads are.
- No ripping to a PC; excuse: piracy.
- No shooting of copyrighted objects with a camera; excuse: piracy.
- No open formats such as mp3; excuse: piracy.
- No skipping ads and copyright ads on DVD's or TV; excuse: piracy.
- Fetch your seearch history and habits from search engines; excuse: piracy/child porn/terrorism.
- Back door on cryptographic solutions for the government; excuse: piracy/child porn/terrorism.
- Storing your e-mail and traffic for later review by the authorities; excuse: piracy/child porn/terrorism.
We're looking for further excuses to install RFID chips under your skin, and electric zappers to control your actions, stay tuned.
You ask a very interesting question.
How does one award the content creators.
Remember, in a capitalist society, 'market forces' are meant to regulate the efficiency of the market.
If you restrict or charge too much for your product, the less people buy, and if you give it a away, your volumes are high but you make no money. Its the profit bell curve.
Previously, cost of duplication/distribution has been one of the main regultators in the content creation market. There is now a disruptive technology (the internet) that is taking away this previous 'stabiliser'. What we are seeing now is the free market, trying to recorrect its inefficiency (loss of profits). This will always cause pain. What suprises me, is the internet is huge opportunity to make squillions more money out of consumers (can you say back catalouges peoples!) though much increased volume and less cost per unit item.
This I think is where the RIAA etc have got it wrong. 99% of people want to do the right thing. 99% of western consumers do not steal from their local store. Even in Australia now, we have 'self checkouts'.
If the RIAA were run Kmart/Walmart, all the product would be behind glass locked cabinets.
Treat the consumer with respect, offer the product at a much more reasonable price, and people will generally do the right thing.
The problem I see, is that the RIAA etc, have played hardball for so long, the consumer has got quite adept at (and cultured themselves) to using P2P, AllofMP3 etc, making the battle to change that culture much harder than it needed to be.
46137
I let my wallet speak for me when it comes to this crap...
:) Bleh!
I won't buy a philips product if it enforces viewing of ads...
Or anyone else's product of like features...
This is why I DO NOT have Tivo and do NOT watch much TV.
Heck, Most of the time I still use my VCR to record any "MUST SEE TV" - (c)NBC And just FF through commercials... Unless it is one I WANT to see (heard from friends after souper bowle or some such reason.)
No, My computer is not an 8088 either, but yes, sometimes lowtech is the way...
oh, and of course there is the famous (Click) surf or (Click) off buttons.
If Phil & Co were smart they would make note of this... It's ashame that I already skip going to the movies because they force you to watch adds after purchasing a license to experience the content of the film in comfy seats with loud surround sound.
But then again, I don't think I've missed toooo many movies that were worth seeing anyways.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
There's a lot going on right now in television that resembles what happened on the Max Headroom television series. A dystopian future where the people who don't pay for education can't get it (even things as simple as the ABC's, but we're not there, YET), intellectual property controls, corporations the size of governments with the same amount of power, and even this patent by phillips was part of an episode.
There's a scene where an officer walks to a woman's apartment, pushes the off switch on the TV and exclaims, "An off switch! She'll get 20 years for that!".
Ah well, It's primetime and it's time for dancing poodles on TV. Gotta go.
Blank is beautiful!
This is what I see happening:
- The companies that sell these devices leave out the part about them forcing you to watch commercials.
- A huge amount of people buy them.
- Less than a month later, customers get pissed off at the company and return the devices to wherever they bought them.
After loosing tons of money over this, the companies finally realise that they have to listen to consumers.
Of course, this would only happen in a perfect world. Something is bound to come up that will prevent people from receiving refunds or something of that matter.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Oddly, I kind of want them to get this patent.
;)
If Philips ties the idea of forcing ads on those of us with their equipment, it keeps everyone else from doing the same without licensing the technology.
Might as well enjoy the handful of accidental benefits of the borked patent system. . .
~EEE~
This idea goes exactly against what successful companies like Google and Overture are doing. This will totally turn off consumers to anyone who implements this. Good luck.
No Sigs!
Why bother hacking a TV when a DVB card can do it for you?
If they do broadcast a (don't skip the adds) flag I'd be surprised if the MythTV backend wasn't updated (within a few hours of the first boardcast) to strip that content from the video files as it records them. Or even better just pausing the record while the flag is present.
We have over 900 channels all largely showing the same crap and the same re-runs. I see little reason to even have a TV.
This will be yet another reason for people to (1) not buy the product and (2) find something that meets their needs - which may be a home grown product and (3) cancel their cable or satelite subscription as well.
Oh they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions - this isn't even a good intention.
Philips suggests adding flags to commercial breaks to stop a viewer from changing channels until the adverts are over.
So I'm surfing through channels, click, don't want that, click, nope, click, nope, click, nope, click ADVERTISEMENT and I'm stuck. I have to watch the add according to this until it's over and then i can go back to surfing to find out there's nothing on. Now THAT will suck.
-=JML=-
And I quote:
"Where I was taken to, brothers was like no cinnie I ever viddied before. I was bound up in a straightjacket and my gulliver was strapped to a headrest with like wires running away from it. Then they clamped like lodlocks on my eyes so that I could not shut them, no matter how hard I tried."
Sorry guys. This has already been done by the guys who made A Clockwork Orange, circa 1971.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Will flags be constantly on during infomercials? Since they don't have ads throughout it could be quite a problem if channel surfing and you stumble across one.
If we are going to be stuck with patents, can someone form an organisation that patents the evil stuff and makes it extremely expensive to do?
Exactly. I buy a lot of DVD's but I also rip a lot of rentals too. Every time I learn of some bullshit scheme like this the numbers rise on the ripping side. As things stand right now I rip a lot of the ones I buy anyway to make "disposable copies" while protecting the originals.
When I rent a movie and rip it to make a keeper is it stealing? I guess so but I don't really care at this point. They hack away at my rights and in return I hack away at their profits.
Sure I'm not right but neither are they. They might be "legal" but that doesn't make them right.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I was born here. I guess the cost would be whatever you would value a broken condom at, in early 1970s dollars :).
Yaz.
1. You cannot "file a patent." You file an application, and you that application can be anything you damn well please. You could file your local telephone book if you like. Tell Slashdot you filed your phone book as a patent application. It will be all over the headlines and you'll be famous for "patenting the phone book," although anyone with 22 seconds of experience working with the patent system would know that statement is unquestionably false.
2. The article itself links to "the full patent" which is unquestionably not a patent. There is literally no story here.
It's not like this is funny - an application for sex toys or resurrection machines. It's not like it's morally offensive - an application for a suicide machine. It's simply an application for a way to make some money. Sure, people might not like it, but any idiot who can force people to watch advertisements is a marketing genius. Whether or not it's fit to be patented is another story altogether, and one that won't be answered for years. The 371(c) date of that application is June 2005 - it probably won't even be glanced at by a patent examiner until 2007 or 2008.
This informative post was brought to you free of charge. Sorry for the interruption. If you scroll down (or up), you'll read the normal Slashdot non-sequitur deliberate ignorance that brings you back to this website time after time. I just wonder if anybody but myself gets tired of reading systematically false and erroneous "news" reports on Slashdot.
I think this ship sailed when corporations realized that the average consumer doesn't care what their software EULA says. You certainly don't own any software you've purchased, and the idea is starting to migrate to other things....
or else it wont do you much good. This is why Illuminated Business Microsun Inc. aka "the industry" patents everything from the mouseclick to "organizing data on a means of retaining state over long periods of time in organizational subunits of variable or invariable size"). To them a $10,000 is as much as a dime to you. However when they want to cash in on their patents (or to squeeze you and everybody else out of business), if you don't fold like a good boy they take you to court over these patents and sue for infringement and of course damage. You know what happens in court, I don't have to tell you, now do I.
They show you the commercials and then in order to view the next segment you have to
answer a quiz about the commercials that were on. If you fail the quiz you have to watch the commercials
over you failed on. Questions could be as easy as "Why is XYZ so yummy!" Answer: Ad slogan to
difficult question like "Please mark the commercials that showed a dog".
I just got this idea from a science fiction story I read as a kid where people lived in a society where
they had to attentively watch the evening news - or be severely punished for missing them. The "News Police" would
ring doorbells at random and give pop quizzes. I'd say a rather scary thought, especially with the implication
that you have to be home after 8pm so they can check up on you.
...said one Phillips executive as he vanished in a cloud of his own vomit.
So, if he were a vampire, would that make him Count Barfula?
Or maybe he'd be Count Bulimia! Oh noes! Look out! It's Count Bulimia! He strikes fear into 7-Elevens, all-you-can-eat-buffets, ice cream aisles and toilets everywhere!
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
I don't understand why Philips would do this. They make TV sets and VCRs and DVDs and such - but they don't own TV stations or cable networks so they don't profit from advertising. All this would do would be to make people not want to buy their equipment...where is the profit motive?
I used to work for Philips Research Labs - they encourage employees to patent stuff - but that doesn't mean that they intend to make products that use the patent. Often they just want a large pile of patents to threaten other companies with - or patents may be defensive in nature. (There is a great story that Philips made a PacMan clone on one of their game consoles years ago - and just like every other company in that business, they got sued by Atari over it. Everyone else caved in and paid up - but Philips dug out an incredibly ancient Magnavox patent that covered the use of TV sets for synthetic video entertainments of all kinds...Atari dropped the law suite - but Philips didn't ever use their broad patent offensively. So defensive patents - when used ethically - are not necessarily a bad thing).
Anyway - it's very dangerous to assign motives to a company due to some random patent.
Personally, I can see a hidden advantage here. If the TV can lock out the controls when there are adverts present - that means that there must be some kind of flag embedded in the advert so the TV can recognise it. This flag would be a wonderful thing because it would mean that someone could use that very same flag to cause a PVR to skip over the advert completely automatically!
www.sjbaker.org
Everything started out ad-free. Every communication medium, including radio, tv, the internet...
I suggest you read Slashdot
Personally I HATE it when people channel surf during the commercials... I always end up missing the first 30 seconds of the show after each commercial break
Just another crappy blog
Yes, I do own software that I've purchased. I don't own software that I've licensed. The distinction is a contract.
A wide variety of restrictions and conditions may be included in a sales contract. But a contract requires that all parties to the contract understand and agree to the terms in advance of the exchange of value. I've licensed software under a true contract, and was required to read, understand, agree, sign, and date that contract before I received the software or before the vendor would accept my money.
If you buy retail software, that's an ordinary sale, not a sales contract. If you gave your money and received the software, then the transaction is final. No EULA revealed after the fact of the sale changes the nature of the sale. Click-throughs and sealed envelops do not represent agreement, because the time for any agreement passed once the goods and money changed hands.
That's why the average consumer doesn't care what the EULA claims. They understand that the typical EULA is a fiction, that a so-called License Agreement lacks the one true indication of agreement: acceptance of the terms shown by the exchange of value. The deal is done when the exchange is made. The terms are those that were disclosed and agreed to in advance of the exchange. It's a simple concept, even children understand agreement must occur before the deal is closed, and changes after the fact are not binding.
There have always been, and will always be, those who profit from creating complication and confusion around business transactions. Some swindles and frauds are illegal, some trickery and sharp practice is just inside the law. But it's all dishonest.
If Philips discloses, in advance, that others will keep partial control of the device, and buyers read and agree to those terms, then I have no problem with such informed consent. Just as I can sell my house with the condition that I will have the use of it for the rest of my life. The price will reflect those terms. What I can't do is agree to sell, take the money, and then later tape a notice on the front door that entering the door indicates acceptance of additional terms. It's the buyer's door once I take his money, and he can do whatever he wants with it. It's no different than taping that notice on every door in the neighborhood. I can claim it, but my claim is without merit.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
With satellite radio, just the opposite: Sirius' "no ads on the music channels" stance forced XM's hand, who had to drop the (few) commercials they had among the music channels to compete.
"No commercials" really is one of the big selling points for satellite radio, and the providers know it.
Besides, technology that forces ad viewing can also be used to force the viewer to listen to long diatribes read from Atlas Shrugged.
Look at what's happened in the UK to telephone advertising. We have the TPS now implementing the EU privacy directive, which is like the US `do not call' registry but with teeth. No exemptions for politics, charities, pre-existing relationships, and real sanctions against transgressors. Combined with XD I get about one junk call a year, and the same's true for the >60% of the population who have signed up. So the call centres are left chasing those that haven't, and as their call volumes rise, people become motivated to also sign up. It's a death spiral for outbound telemarketing.
Now TV has a similar problem. There just aren't the channels that will deliver 20m. Dr Who got 8.5m on Saturday night, and ~10m is about the maximum anything will get. The young middle classes, to whom you want to advertise, are off watching BBC3 and BBC4 (no adverts) or surfing the web or down the pub. The more you try to lock such people as _are_ watching TV into seeing your adverts, the more you will encourage them to do something else. And people with money, or with technological chops, or with alternatives (ie the very people you want to see your adverts) will flee first. You're left with a desperate weight of adverts pressing down on one poor sod in a long-term ward in Scunthorpe.
I'm always amused by empty shops with pounding music, who assume that as they have X customers at 90dB they'll get 2X customers at 100dB. Er, no: the people who have the money can't stand the noise, so turning it up loses you business. Same principal: you need to think outside the box, not just turn up the volume.
ian
if you were smart enough, you would have patented this idea to prevent anyone else from doing some so utterly disrespectful of other people. The best part about patent submission, is that you just have to come up with idea and you don't have to actually make it. Seems like a good fit with
Any ideas for such patent submissions?
Hey democracy lovers, add Quorum as a c
I always thought that patents should protect original ideas to cover for the expenses that are required for research. When I read patent proposals like this, they are a prime example for what patents should NOT cover. I mean, how hard do you have to think to come up with a flag like this? Basically this is already done in games, to skip cutscenes, only the other way around. I really don't see why a patent should be granted on such trivial ideas. That completely defeats the purpose of patents.
I have no problem accepting patents for stuff where a company actually has to invest money and months or years of work, but ideas like that ar so trivial that you don't even have to think more then two seconds to come up with this solution, if somebody describes this "problem" to you and how you could resolve it.
The only good thing this may have is, that you would have a reliable advertising flag. This was already in that older stream (forgot the name) to automatically program VCRs but no channel used it. Since this flag most certainly would be used, you could cerate a counterdevice, that does the opposite, unless it is not protected by some stupid laws.
Well said commodoresloat!
:P (>_<);;;
:(
Of course the antidote for commercial interests would be to simply put out non-annoying, conscise, informative, even entertaining ads like they did in the early days of TV (where it was mostly product placement within the sponsored shows).
Or make em all like minimovies like The legendary 1984 Apple Computer ad.
Now that's how to do an ad!
The only other ad in the same league would be the (in)famous Where's the Beef? ad for Wendy's with the late great Clara Peller in it.
By comparison, the new ad series for ask.com Googlelike search engine interface is just plain tiresome....
Had the producers juxtaposed the ad content/message with 2001 somehow properly, tastefully, and with the blessing of Stanley Kubrick's estate, they would have had an ad classic on their hands.
Oh well, missed opportunity.
All TV watchers aren't mindless sheeple....
Unfortunately, the advertisers are convinced that most of them are....
Walking down the Path of Evil to the Ultimate Precipice of Slippery Slopeyness:
I've had this idea for a long time. Instead of making you watch a commercial or making commercials louder to make them harder to ignore, you get the choice to watch the advertisements or not. But before you can proceed to the rest of the content, you have to have some interaction with the set to make sure the advertisement made an "impression."
Examples:
- Click the advertiser's logo (logo moves so no auto-clicky)
- 4x4 game of "concentration" to match logo, product, company name, etc.
- Multiple-choice questions about the advert
- Click on character "talking heads" from the advert to make them reiterate parts of the message
- Characters act out a bit, then you get to choose "should Clara (a) Use Brand Z to bake her cake or (b) use SuperMix Cake Mix- with Real Cake Bits(sm)!" then react appropriately to your choice.
The possibilities are endless. Make it entertaining enough (and short enough), and the "user" (aka the "used") won't mind much at all.
Truer than you realise:
Source ArticleCorporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce