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Live Commercials Will Save TV?
Vitaly Friedman writes "Entrepreneur Mark Cuban doesn't believe that traditional television advertising is dead, it simply needs to be more interesting. And what's more interesting than being live? From the article: 'It's no secret that the traditional 30-second spot has been losing much of its luster with advertisers. With the rise of other media options (videogames, home theater systems, Web surfing) on the one hand and the recent growth of DVRs like TiVo on the other, traditional television advertising has been feeling the squeeze. Broadcasting executives are struggling to figure out the economics of the new digital landscape, and have been willing to try just about any creative idea, such as TiVo's plan to replace old commercials with new ones when watching recorded shows.'"
This is perfect, some GREAT opportunities for wardrobe malfunctions and haircombing shots... :)
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Unless these commercials consist of little more than someone scrolling through a powerpoint, how could this not get expensive fast? Most commercials are recycled for months or years, not minutes...
No more talking gecko!
One of the most annoying things to me about TV ads is seeing the same ones repeated 3 or 4 (or more) times during a one hour show. Even if the ad itself isn't particularly annoying, it becomes so after I've seen it enough times over a short enough period of time.
What I'm driving at is that I think live TV commercials *would* be interesting, at least at first. No doubt they would become just as normal and familiar as everything else shown on TV in the past 50+ years, but at least we wouldn't have to see the same thing over and over and over again.
On the other hand, considering how much money is currently spent on pre-recorded commercials, I somehow doubt that we'd see more than a few live ones, only during prime-time, and only on major networks.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Most commercials make me want to jab something sharp into my eyesockets. Some, however, are actually funny. Or, if not outright funny, at least visually interesting. Make more of those and I might be persuaded not to switch channels.
Just get rid of advertising, Pay for the show with DVD sales. Why isn't it allready like this?
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
How about no commercials would save TV? It's the commercials that people hate, so remove them.
TV needs people to watch it, and more and more people don't want to because of the ads.
If 24 is actually 18 hours long, that says something awful about how much advertising is on tv.
Ok, no ads, means no money for tv, so:
Why not reduce ads to a level at which they stop being so intrusive? Have a couple at fewer times and charge more. Make better TV to get more viewers and spots can become more expensive. Revenue could stay the same, and TV would actually improve.
"Hello friends. I'm your Vitameatavegamin girl. Are you tired, run-down, listless? Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? The answer to all your problems is in this little bottle. Vitameatavegamin. Yes, Vitameatavegamin contains Vitamins Meat Vegetables and Minerals. Yes, with Vitameatavegamin, you can spoon your way to health. All you do is take a great big tablespoonful after every meal. Mmmmmmm..... It's so tasty, too! Tastes just like candy! So why don't you join all the thousands of happy peppy people and get a great big bottle of Vitameatavegamin tomorrow! That's Vita-meata-vegamin! (wink)"
What?
Really, while the idea of live and/or more interesting commercials does have some appeal, in the end I think advertisers will simply resort to more and more product placement. Which could lead to some interesting convolutions of plotlines for shows that don't take place in modern society. I can see sci fi shows placing products with the rationalization that they are so damn good that the companies that make them today are still around in the future. But what about historical shows?
I predict more time travel and dream sequences.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If you want a road map of whats going to happen to TV, take a look at radio.
Sirius and XM are becoming more popular and from what I've seen, public radio is gaining an audience. People are abandoning commercial radio because now there are alternatives! The same will happen to TV, take note!
-Ponga
Won't QVC be up in arms over this "live advertising" idea?
Really, it isn't. You just get screwed up lines, and pay a hell of a lot extra for it.
What's interesting is relevance. The average bachelor isn't going to run out and buy tampons because an actress told him how fun it was to go rollerskating on your period, but he might go out and buy exercise equipment because Chuck Norris told him it would improve his roundhouse kicks.
The problem is getting the information necessary to tailor ads to individual preferences without it being a hassle for the viewer or infringe on privacy. Rather than try and obtain their preferences through positive reinforcement, I suggest there should be a huge red button on every remote that says I never want to see this advert again!
This way, viewers can get rid of the really annoying adverts and the ones that don't interest them at all, and advertisers can build up an idea of what they do like by seeing what they don't block.
Obviously, there has to be some safeguard against simply blocking every advert, but that shouldn't be too difficult. For example, only let viweers block x number of adverts, and when they block more than that, start unblocking the least recently blocked ones.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
But when you need it
So repetition is what the advertisers want.
The trick is to make the repetition less boring so people don't fast forward through the commercial and you lose that repetition.
But the writers have enough trouble making a 20 minute show interesting enough just once a week for a season. Asking them to make the commercials interesting
That's usually when I give up and turn the TV off for a week. -CF
The Tivo/DVR changes the whole dynamic of television. It used to be mandatory to watch the commercials, or at least wait them out. Now, the DVR makes it trivial to skip them over.
Ever watch American Idol? Notice the TVs behind Ryan Seacrest displaying Coca Cola logos and bubbles? The ads are becoming part of the show.
But, along these same lines, ads are starting to get better. Every day, I get video files forwarded to me by E-mail that are frequently... ADS. And they're funny as hell.
Here's an example: It's funny as hell, and I sure don't mind forwarding this to my friends. So, this leather company not only gets people to look at their ad, they don't even pay the costs of distribution!
The world is changing. Guess what? It's been doing that since it was created...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the problem isn't the medium or the execution, but more that society (or at least, a subset of it) has become entirely numb to advertisements.
Don't get me wrong, I laugh at adverts if they're legitimately funny, but that doesn't mean I'm going to buy the product.
We've been bombarded by them so much that we simply don't take in the relevance of the product. My own mother, who is perhaps the biggest couch potato I know, has been using the ad breaks to make a cup of tea for as long as I can remember.
Additionally, I know myself that much of my product awareness is broadcast from leading individuals in communities that I feel I can trust not to BS me, something not possible until the advent of the internet, and in particular the blogosphere.
Do you see what I did there?
Every time I read an article on this subject, someone is hypothesizing that in the next release TiVo may kill the ability to skip commercials altogether. I can't think of anything to be less afraid of. If TiVo did that, TiVo would vanish overnight and we'd all be watching Myth TV or any number of other PC based solutions.
So what's the solution for the TV networks?
There's only one "killer" solution for the TV business, and its been around for a long time: Its called "Pay Channels". (Or paid digital downloads as the case may be). And its the future, whether you like it or not.
The advertising model as we know it will cease to exist.
Product placement is a fantasy. It will never carry the same level of messaging, or command the same revenues. The networks will try to push it, but the advertisers don't think they're getting their money's worth, and the viewers will just be increasingly disgusted.
The answer is "Pay for it" and its already here
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
For the last few years, my roommates and I, we've had a Superbowl party. None of us really care for football though. What do we do? Use it as an excuse to get together and socialize with friends. And after it's been on long enough, we Tivo through the game, and watch the commercials.
Yes, marketing types, we watch the Superbowl commercials ON PURPOSE!!!
I can't remember who won, or even who played in, the Superbowl for the past several years. But I remember the E-Trade monkey, Terry Tate the office linebacker, the pets.com sock puppet, Autobytel, and those Budwiser frogs. Hell, I know the dialogue to the 1984 Macintosh commercial by heart!
What's the difference? During the Superbowl is about the only time the advertisers put out commercials that DON'T FUCKING SUCK!!! Get that you pinheaded marketing drones?!?!? Make your commercials NOT SUCK... make them entertaining... and I WON'T Tivo past them! No tricks, no stunts, no blipverts, no need to try and rig broadcasts so I CAN'T fast-forward; and don't accuse me of being a thief for getting up to go to the bathroom; just stop making your commercials suck ass!
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
I'd say that's about right for here in America, too. Though, personally, I'd swap the country music albums, as much as I hate them, for car commercials. Usually they look like they're designed by someone who spent too much of their time in college studying post modern art that they forgot they're selling a car, not a 3-D modelling program.
This is why I refuse to buy almost anything I haven't researched and/or sampled beforehand. I'll be damned if I'm going to be persuaded by some lying ads. (I've known some awesome products to have horrendous ads, and some horrendous products that have had [though rarely] good ads. Better to look into reviews first)
And I'd like to make a special mention for drug ads. Let me say this: If you have to ask your doctor if you need a drug, you don't need it. If you're so sick that you need medication, your doctor should (in an indeal world) be the one to tell you. I'd like to see pharmaceutical ads off advertisements altogether, before they make this already paranoid generation into hypochondriacs.
The problem is hollywood has no idea what "interesting" means.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
The problem is that advertisers aren't being very scientific about this. When you read a newspaper, no one forces you to read the ads, yet they are very effective! No one has proven that skipping ads makes them less effective.
I think advertisers would be surprised if they tried to determine how much of their message "sticks" when viewers can skip through them. Specifically, when someone is skipping through an ad, that person is paying close attention. Likewise, even when people have the ability to skip an ad, they will still let them play while they walk to the kitchen for a [insert heavily advertised snack or beverage].
A company like Tivo might want to consider investing in experiments that demonstrate how a Tivo can make traditional television advertising more effective.
No, I will not work for your startup