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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.'"
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.
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What?
My idea for an ad is a 4 second clip of someone paying with a Visa card, slowed down 8x. That way people fast-forwarding on their TiVo get to see it in real time.
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
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
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