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Advertising Comes to DVR Owners
bill_kress writes "According to Reuters, television studios are finally trying to target DVR viewers with advertising. The effort, however, seems rather backwards — They are extending the same exact image across the entire 30 second commercial so that TIVO Viewers will be forced to view at least one frame. Wouldn't it be better to add value to the viewing experience instead?" From the article: "The advert for its new drama 'Brotherhood' will show a single image on the screen for the entire 30-second slot, and therefore retain its "sales message" when viewed even at the 12-times speeds enabled by Sky+ and other digital recorders, also known as personal video recorders, or PVRs. Advertisers have been racing to find ways to get messages through as higher numbers of consumers watch TV programs when they want using such recorders, often skipping the commercials."
Gee, that won't upset the standard viewing public at all... will it?
Maybe they could play an emergency test tone over the entire 30 seconds, just to get everyone's attention.
For people without DVRs.
Way to encourage them to get up and go do something else, instead of looking at the same non-moving ad for 30 seconds.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I'll just use the "skip 30 seconds" button that's on both my DVD and VHS recorders.
Good thing Tivos and other DVRs have no way to just skip 30 seconds...
Tivo: Go go gadget 30 second skip!
MythTV: Go go gadget commercial detection and skip!
Windows DVRs: Uh... Go go gadget DRM! Aw, crap!
Ryan Fenton
"Wouldn't it be better to add value to the viewing experience instead?" only if your primary concern was the viewer instead of advertising fees
+1 fashionably cynical
So, how long is it going to take for PVR makers to develop software that reads the AUDIO stream and returns you to your regularly scheduled programming when the waveform peaks go from clipped to normal? I don't want to jump 30 seconds forward. I want to skip the commercials.
I say "Bring it on!" If all advertisers did this, then it will be easier for my DVR to detect comercials so I don't have to see them at all!
You just have to wonder just how dense the network executives really are. I wonder when it will finally sink in that saturating your programming with advertising to the point that the viewing audience revolts is ultimately counter-productive. They should take it as a clue that if viewers are willing to spend several hundred dollars to avoid ads using specialized hardware, there is something seriously wrong with your marketing plan.
When all else fails, run.
GE did something infinetely more intelligent a few months ago.
The last second of their ad was a set of single frames with interesting information. To see what was there, you had to repeatedly watch the ad until you managed to hit pause at just the right time so you could single-step through the hidden content.
That way, (at least some) TiVo owners ended up spending 15 minutes on a 30-second ad. Now THAT's creative!!
This is another reason some networks are doing "podbusters", quick little 5 second (or so) ads right before the program starts... users with DVRs skip normal length ads but will have a higher likelihood of accidentally seeing a podbuster.
If I see a good, or interesting looking add I will stop to watch it. A great example of this is the add with Abe Lincon and a monkey playing jump rope. You can't just wizz by Abe Lincon and a monkey playing jump rope, you have to see what it's all about. Turnes out the add was for sleeping pills.
If it's dead, you killed it.
Every f***up like DRM, the bastardization of Star Trek TOS, or this will result in more diversity and faster P2P downloads.
:-)
Thank you, really... seriously...
Isn't this how it always is though? When Cable TV first arrived it was touted as having no commercials and then they came. We used to have the luxury of not watching commercials at the movie theatre because we paid to be there, now we have to watch the same trailer for the same bad tv show over and over again while we wait for the movie to start. The "no commercials" idea is IMHO a bait and switch maneuver that for some reason always works on consumers. The ridiculous number of commercials is the main reason I don't watch tv anymore. There are some shows I might like to see, but I'm not willing to sit through all the commercials to see them. Of course, it doesn't help that most of the shows are bad shows with excessively overpaid actors which brings us back to the insane amount of commercials, they have to pay for the talent, or lack thereof.
Are the guys who think of these things that lame that this is the best they can do? Oooo, we'll force viewers to see the message. Bah, I'll just keep myself full of beer so that I don't understand the visual even if I see it. Let them suck on that!
As a ReplayTV owner, I typically do 2-3 minute jumps over commercial blocks. The only commercials I see are the first couple of seconds of the first commercial and the last second or two of the last commercial. Everything else in between gets skipped over instantly. All this is going to do is annoy the hell out of people who watch tv in real-time.
It sounds like the perfect signal for PVR software to watch for in order to skip commercials automatically.
.....PVR's that skip 31 Seconds.
One definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior expecting a different outcome. It looks like advertising companies are functionally insane. Advertising on television is dead; people have moved on. (Hell, I don't even watch or pay for TV anymore).
Time to find a new way to get paid to annoy millions of people.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
(I know your all gearing up to whine about how hard mythtv is to install,... then you probably havent tried Knoppmyth, or the Hyams Fantastic How-to )
Wouldn't it be better to add value to the viewing experience instead?
Are we talking shows like Transformers, He-Man, and G.I. Joe? It doesn't seem really possible to add value to the viewing experience by promoting products... take CSI for example. Hearing a ring tone with a pop-song-du-jour and then having one person asking about the tone, and the owner of the phone saying "Yeah, that's band_name, I like them." seems pretty pointless and annoying. It has nothing to do with the plot, it's a song I heard on the radio 1000 times already anyway, how is it going to sell me that song/album? It's just going to detract from the thing I am trying to do at the moment: Watch a show.
This is just stupid. I consider it a brute force attack at DVR owners, however, I still might miss this commercial thanks to the hidden 30 sec skip feature of the TiVo. (While watching a show: SELECT PLAY SELECT 3 0 SELECT. Your skip 30 min button will now do 30s instead. Repeat whenever an update resets functionality.) While these adds might be reach more DVR owners, they are going to need the most entertaining audio script in the world or they are going to be COMPLETELY boring for average TV viewers.
There is a far more preferable category of commercials targetted at DVR owners: The ones that make you want to stop for them. Some commercials you merely stop for because they either interest you(car commercials when you are car shopping) are are simply well scripted and entertaining(Some of the recent Mac commercials). Then there was also a novel series of commercials that GE was running which had a series of text heavy images that were shown for only a few frames each near the end of the commercial. The point was to create a humorous Easter Egg for DVR owners who would be inclined to pause and advance frame by frame.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Just make ads twelve times slower so they are shown with normal speed when fast-forwarding. (-:
Dish Network PVRs skip the 30 seconds. I think they skip 30 foward or they skip 10 seconds back if you miss something. It's a great feature.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
12x speed PVRs will just lead to 360 second slow-mo commercials.
Hahaha, that's nothing! My MythTV does 120-times!
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
Stargate sg-1 recently featured an online companion to the current episode that was only visible while the show was actually being aired. This seems like a very simple and effective way to encourage people to watch the show as it airs and not to TiVo it for later viewing.
"Anyway, long story short... is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling...." - Abraham Simpson
If you really want people to watch your advertisements, make them _want_ to watch. Make them interesting. People will go out of their way to watch them at least once, and share copies with all of their friends.
Of course, the down side to this is that you may have to actually pay someone to do the job.
Why not just film the ads at 1/3rd the real-time, so when you fast foward 3x, they will appear to go at normal speed?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
"how do we keep people from skipping our commercials?" possible answers: ask geico? ask snuggle? the answer (as always) is ingenuity in the commercial and attempting to create some sort of rapport with the viewing public. mr whipple anyone?
personally, i am not so averse to commercials because i only watch digital stations (science channel, mostly) and most commercials there let me know about something i might really be interested in (ie some show that i will want to see)
When I see one of these commercials it will make me sit up and take notice.
I will notice two things and REMEMBER those two things:
1) Which channel the commercial is on
2) Which program the commercial is on
I will not watch that program again, and if I see that commercial on other programs on that channel, I will avoid the channel.
This is not a threat, this is how I react to things I don't like.
I don't like math. I have unconciously structured my life so that I don't need to use math. I didn't do it on purpose, I just did what made me less miserable.
I hope these guys did their homework in psych tests and double-blind studies, or there will be a new crop of baristas at Starbucks who used to work in advertising.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Oddly enough, it's the prime-time shows that I watch that suffer most. I work from home so I usually eat lunch in front of the tube but I don't record that stuff, I just watch it while I'm eating. The same thing happens in the morning while my wife and kids are getting ready to leave for the day; it's The Weather Channel and news real time. Once again, when I'm up playing WoW half the night it's Adult Swim or some syndicated re-runs and I don't even have the remote nearby.
Now when you start talking about the shows I like to watch, it's a whole different story. I record the shows I actually like to watch like 24, Survivorman, Battlestar Galactica, The 4400, etc...well those are the ones I record and consequently skip the advertising.
Like so many other industries, I think technology has made the traditional broadcast advertising business model obsolete. Fortunately they haven't followed the RIAA's lead and started trying to sue us all into watching the commercials.
Politicians are like diapers - they should be changed frequently and for the same reasons.
Don't hold your breath waiting for a commercial PVR vendor to get any sort of effective commercial skip.
Get a mythtv box or some other sort of home built solution that isn't beholden to the status quo.
My child is pretty rarely exposed to television advertising. For this I'm eternally grateful to the myth dev team.
that I watch my shows months after they are recorded.
I mean, I'd really hate to be suckered in by an advertisement that was actually relevant!
But, by watching everything months later I can be sure that any shows being advertised will have been shown long ago... and, like every other frikken commercial... of absolutely no use to me.
So, until I'm:
1) geriatric
2) female
3) senile
4) stupid
5) impotent
6) over weight
7) bored
8) unable to solve my own problems
9) unable to read
etc...
I think I'll just keep skipping commercials. Because, at best... they are a complete waste of my time.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
I think that's a great idea, but the advertising company that can figure out a more creative way of implementing this will be the most successful. For instance, let's say the commercial has 10 images over a 30 second period. If you want to see that commercial you have to use the fast forward x 4. It's interactive and I'm willing to bet people will watch it simply to do it (many will likely watch the commercial 3-4 times simply to make sure they watched it correctly). As much as many of us despise ads - they are not going anywhere. I mean seriously how many times have I seen this "Dice" ad at the top of /.
And the broadcasters didn't think they would be able to come up with a way to get their advertisements to DVR viewers. They should have more faith in themselves next time instead of trying to outlaw every new technology that puts a dent in their current business model.
We're proud of you guys!
"designed to combat viewers using digital recorders to avoid commercials."
It's on biatch!
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Apply directly to screen... Apply directly to screen... Apply directly to screen...
close your eyes for thirty seconds - give your eyes a rest :)
Beats eye strain hands down.
Dear Advertisers,
Make your adverts suck less, and I'll actually stop my tivo to watch them.
I don't need Billy Mays yelling at me. I don't need to see the same annoying people trying to sell me medication for stuff I don't have. I don't need to have an annoying jingle stuck in my head.
Good adverts that are either a) funny, or b) just well done get watched; an example of both is the Napa commercials with the American Chopper guys in it.
Thanks.
If I am looking for advice on stuff to buy, I'll ask you. Get out of my face.
For a group of people so intent on having their message heard, they are awfully resistant to hearing the message that the TV viewing public is sending back.
You know. The message that says "get fucked, TV advertisers. Your commercials suck, piss us off, and we're never buying your shit products. The more you make bad commercials and show them every 7 minutes, the more we hate you, and will do anything to avoid you and your products"
I cancelled TV service completely. It has had a generally positive effect on my life. Borrowing DVDs from the library and bittorrent have filled in any gaps in our household.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Wow, what a stupid thing for advertisers to do.
If you want to target the DVR audience, do what the "Daily Show" did - Rob Cordry had a hilarious skit that included a list of all the people he hates. The list zoomed by so fast that only DVR-capable viewers could watch it. The list of people he hates included an email address: listpausers@yahoo.com - so we emailed it, and got this in reply.
Totally awesome.
In May of this year, GE's "ecomagination" campaign had a very clever TV ad that included a spoof of the commercial itself. The neat thing was that this segment, embedded into the ad itself, was compressed into 1 second of footage that could only be watched by stepping through it frame-by-frame via a DVR.
The "mini-ad" began with a red stage curtain drawn back to reveal the title, "1 Second Theatre", and then featured a little slideshow featuring short (and very funny) biographies of all the animal characters from the "main ad".
Apparently, the show "Lost" has done similar things to augment the show in some ways, but I haven't confirmed this.
These examples are hilarious, innovative, and totally directed to DVR users. It made us pause and watch the content, even when we were used to zooming past the usual mindless, mass-targeted crap that television ads favoured back in the 20th century.
The whole "stretching into a 30 second slide" is totally regressive and proves the advertiser is totally clued out of this fangle "new media" thang. Oh, and will piss off more modern television viewers, not because it's a pain to hit the 30-second advance, but because it's an obvious and badly implemented ploy to get me to see more mindless, mass-targeted crap.
I pay an extra $10 a month to rent the DVR from Comcast. What do I have to do to not watch commercials? How much will it cost? Do I have to buy a 12-pack of Pepsi, 2 pairs of Levis, a Toyota Camry, and a pack of Charmin Toilet Tissue every month before the advertisers will leave me alone?
I'm paying money to not watch commercials. I'm not downloading pirated films or rogue recordings. What the hell is the deal?
What on Earth is the point of trying to ram an advert down the throat of someone who has already demonstrated that he doesn't want to see it? Surely, surely, surely, the person who is forced to view it is more likely to view your product negatively after this experience than he is to suddenly change his mind and decide that "Gosh! I was wrong after all. I really want to buy the product from this manufacturer and not from his competitor."
Hasn't a social scientist of some sort ever actually done an experiment to see what really happens in this sort of circumstance? I would love to see the results of a properly conceived and implemented experiment along these lines.
this is exactly why priacy wins. I have not been to a movie theater since the first comcerial for the us army played. & during that film I walked out (with a refund after makeing a scene in the theator). I was asked to leave and not return. To which i told the manager as long as prices are over $5.00 & i have to pay to watch a comerical I would not return. as for television all i can say is thank god people are kind enough to torrent shows. I remember when comercials where why we watched tv. But, that was before jackass the tv show & reality tv. there was a time when comapnies would actually work on entertaining adverts. this was before breakfast cereals advise the public to be greedy with thier products. Not only do the adverts suck, but they are demeaning to society. thank god there are some old school companies that still no how to reach the entire market. companies like budweiser, coca-cola and aflac.
I'm, um... not Edison Carter, but what I want to know is... how long until we have Blipverts compressing 30 second commercials into 2 seconds. (and how long after that do people start blowing up?)
If you want to learn a little more about ReplayTV's current owner (who also owns of couple of other little brands called "Denon" and "Marantz), check out this web site... It ain't disappearing any time soon. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I've seen a few DVR commercials already and the best was a GE commercial. Near the end of the commercial they had a segment called "GE's 1 second theater" and they did bio's for all the animals in the commercial. I watched that segment of the commercial over and over again so I could read the funny Bio's.
Apparently this was a great marketing idea cause here I am months later still talking about what a great idea this commercial was. Obviously someone at GE has a clue and decided why fight technology when you can use it to your advantage!
No need to hold your breath -- it's been done already by a commercial DVR vendor, and the end result is still very much available. Just check out eBay for any 5000-series ReplayTV unit (not 5500-series, which dropped the auto-skip feature).
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
What's really funny about HeadOn is that it doesn't actually work, at all. It contains no actual medicine of any kind, or not enough to actually matter. It's homeopathic nonsense, meaning that lower dosages of actual working ingredients are considered better, somehow.
So yes, that's right, they're selling wax in a tube to rub on your forehead to relieve your headaches.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Go TiVo! Innovate some more! Sue some more companies and get the ads back in ALL our homes!
I probably posted this somewhere before. But anyway, here goes again.
What I want is for my PVR to *record* the commercial, and then when I'm watching the program inform me that it has ads that I can watch. When I feel like looking at the ads, it should give me a list of available ads showing me:
- Sponsor
- The shows that the sponsor sponsors
- a gross classification for the ad (gambling, liquor, sex, stuff I don't care about)
- Ad name
I should be able to filter the ads so that it automatically removes ads that I might object to (tampon ads), and possibly prioritize the ads that I want to see (beer ads).
When I see an ad that has something I want, I should be able to press a button and be taken to a web page for the sponsor (or at the very least give me a web page so that I can write it down and go to it later). I should be able to indicate with my PVR that I like or dislike an ad and have that information sent to the sponsor so that they can taylor their ads to their target market.
If an ad is for another TV program, I should be able to hit a button and have it automatically record that show.
If I really like an ad, I should be able to share it with my friends over the internet.
Why are they trying to force me to watch ads I don't want to watch, and making it difficult to find ads that I *do* want to watch?????? All of this is completely reasonable to implement with today's technology. Where is it?????
You know what would be clever? If they could make a commercial that would look normal at normal speed, be a different/neater commercial at 2x speed, be an even different one at 15x speed, etc. Match the speeds offered by Tivo, etc. I bet people would play them at all speeds, to see the different ones.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
I hate those stupid pop-ups on the bottom of the screen. Ever see the ones that make noise, usually some awful blatting, whooshing sound? Makes me want to track down the ad executive responsible, cuff him to a chair, superglue his eyelids open and make him watch his own crap advertising over and over again until he goes completely insane.
On topic, what about those of us who use the skip forward button? I with skip, you still have a chance of catching a frame of an ad or two, but really, who pays attention to that? Don't these fools get it? I'm not interested. I'm not going to buy their product because I saw a frame of it on TV.
So how long do you suppose it will be until these sick bastards buy themselves enough congress critters to make it illegal to not watch ads? It's stealing! Stealing coke right out of their noses!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Talk about an easy way to predict a commercial. Not to mention an easy way to build a database of known commercials. I was worried the complexities of modern telvision advertisements would ward off most spam detection, but with something that accomplishable, this might start off another wave of advert detection in video ;)
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
The first time I heard about an idea like this was from a slashdot comment. Someone wondered - a video of a Visa card getting taken out of a wallet in slo-mo...just enough so it would be "real time" to a fast-forwarding Tivo owner. I though the idea was brilliant, although my Tivo doesn't have a smooth frame rate while it forwards. Maybe someone at an ad agency was reading Slashdot? I looked for the original post but could not find it.
I watch TV via mythtv and bitorrent. I haven't actually seen a commercial in a couple of years but yet, I see them all the time. I see the Nike runners that Geoff House puts on in 'House'. I see the AOL search engine that no self-respecting mythbuster would _choose_ to use if his paycheck wasn't riding on it. This is why the period piece is a dying art. They can't afford to make them anymore due to the lack of product placement opportunities.
I usually have 2 programs that I "watch" one main and the other one I flip to when the commercial break comes on the program I am watching, I have gotten so used to it that i usually flip back when the break has ended.
.gif ads and block flash completely.
I HATE commercials, unfortunately they are everywhere. I understand commercials and their place, but their original usage (revenue from ad agencies in return for free services) is long gone, is it so outrageous to expect to not have commercials when i am paying for services? Cable, movies, newspapers, magazines and now games... it would be one thing if they were free with commercials, but I AM PAYING FOR THESE SERVICES!!!
So i actively subvert advertisers efforts, i delete the "movie" type ads in my games, i refuse to watch commercials on TV/Cable (I will flip or do other things during commercials) i pop a DVD in my dvd player and don't tune the video output until the counter starts cycling (usually the sign that it is on the menu portion) and get my news online using "print this page".
Oh I also block any images using firefox for
Often people ask me, did you see that ad for such and such, i am happy to say "no, I don't know what you are talking about".
Why don't they keep making commercials as they have been and then slap a bar at the bottom with the crucial key points that stays the same for the 30 seconds.
That way you keep key information such as brand, product, price, whatever on the screen the whole time so someone fast forwarding through it will still see it for 5 seconds, and then the other 80% of the screen is still allocated to the regular commercial so that regular people can still "enjoy" a normal commercial.
Or would this make it easier to identify commercials and skip them via a digital scan?
I am sure that having spent so much time and money setting up kit to avoid advertising for moronic products, once my systems are bypassed i will rush out and buy said moronic products. Yeah. Bound to happen. Way to go, advertising guys. Have another few lines and come up with another winning plan. You're doing a great job.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
What better way to write a VERY simple and lightweight algorithm for editing out commercials than if any single image persists for longer than, say, n (e.g. 5) seconds?
This is perfect! No more complex guessing ... I say, BRING THIS ON!
Surely if you are using a technology to avoid advertising then you wish to avoid it all together - so how successful can that type of advert be? Its irritating for the sake of being irritating.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
Then when you fast forwarded through, they'd be at the correct speed. True they'd last 6 minutes each which would eat into programme time...
but you could get round that by showing all the programmes 12x slower too... um, I think my head is about to explode...
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I'm much more likely to put the product on my shit list. Not the show.
While I tend to agree, consider the sort of companies that will resort to tactics like this to "trick" people into seeing their product...
Personally, I don't think I use any products for which I've ever seen an advertisement - Scratch that, I've seen ads for Guinness. And I can't imagine I've never seen a BirdsEye ad (I use their frozen spinach in a lot of recipes, it works MUCH better than fresh, and doesn't tend to have sand in it like the generics), though I can't remember any offhand. Hmmm... Okay, I've seen ads for the American Cotton Growers association (or whatever the hell they call themselves), and do prefer all-cotton clothing. But at a quick glance around my house, I seriously doubt I could win a million dollar bet to find a dozen items with ads currently running on TV.
But that pretty much illustrates my point (and yours as well, to a degree) - Not only do commercials push me away from products rather than attract me, but the vast majority of products worth using (for their own merits rather than the hype) don't need ads.
Anybody remember that product placements are on the increase?
Coderz 4 Life
I use a PVR and edit the commercials out of the shows before I watch them. One type of commercial I've seen increasing lately is the one placed between the end of a local break and the end of the network break. The previous commercial will go to black as if to return to the show, but instead shows a brief fraction of another commercial. Breaks like that are annoying as you have to check the black space in all breaks.
Editing commercials, other than that above, are easy to edit. When a break starts just jump ahead 2:30 to 3:30 and scrub until you find the show. It is rare that you will find a break less than 2:30, and most breaks are 3:00 or slightly longer.
If networks & channels want me to watch their commercials they are going to find that tricky as I already edit commercials out of everything I watch. When they go back to directed product placement (with actors referencing a product & the features) then they will simply lose another viewer.
TV as entertainment is optional. I can and will drop it if advertisers make it worthwhile.
I'm not a DVR owner, but here's my opinion as a consumer nonetheless.
It would be better if they changed the format so when trying to fast-forward through a section, a reasonably-sized banner would appear on the screen (lower lefthand corner) showing what they choose. So in other words, as the screen normally fast-forwards, there'd be a normal play speed banner showing whatever the other-signal says to play. (So fast-forwarding through the actual t.v. show could be used to show a banner on the bottom left showing the t.v. show at normal speed until fast-forwarding is done.)
"Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover!"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I own a Replay with autocom skip. Max I see is a couple seconds of the first comercial and the tail end of the last comercial before the show starts back up. Autocom skip works roughly 90% of the time with me so they really don't have much of a chance. Maybe they should just charge advertisers more for the first & last comercials. First one I see the opening (useless usually) and the last one I usualy just see the product sans marketing gimmicks. Of which usualy the last comercial is usualy them making a pitch for another show on the channel.
I am glad to see that the advertisers are getting desperate enough to get stupid.
I like my TV shows, but there is something about the advertising industry that I find aesthetically repulsive in terms of its purpose and impact on civilization.
I am looking forward to the day when TV shows are purchased by the season commercial free. This is just one more step along that road.
END COMMUNICATION
My summary had a suggested solution, but it was edited (Significant improvement overall, thanks eds).
I have been waiting for TV advertisers to come out with something like graphic novels that we can go through frame by frame. The novels could be around 10 seconds instead of 30, spend all the extra money on producing worthwhile content.
At one or two frames of video per page of graphic novel, I'm guessing that you should be able to get hundreds of pages in a 5-10 second spot (30fps * 10=150 or 300 pages). This seems high, anyone know if this is accurate?
The trick is to take ads and intersperse them with the text. You could get a bunch of half-page or full-page ads in with the content, or just have one constant add across the bottom (Preferably with a URL so the non-tivos can go find the same content on the web).
A very primitave version of this is done with Two and a half Men. The producer has created what he calls "Vanity Cards" where he writes what are essentially little blog entry and flashes it on the screen for a fraction of a second.
They are usually pretty interesting, my wife and I always back up, pause and take a minute to read the card. There is an archive of all his vanity cards here: http://www.chucklorre.com/text/
I'm surprised those HeadOn retards didn't try it first.
Now that I think of it, their current add has so little motion in it, it's more or less a similar outcome.
We are of one mind.
The most used button is the MUTE followed closely by the flip.
What I wonder at the the mindset of the people who think that by using these measures they can actually get me to buy something from them.
Incredible.
Once I have gone through so much trouble to block ads, what makes them think that I will actually respond to an ad?
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
The primary reason that TV shows continue to be made is to make money. TV shows make money from subscriptions or (mainly) from adverts. If loads of people don't watch the adverts, the revenue stream dries up. I'm not sure people here know how much advertising contributes to to some channels (erm, 100%?).
I hate adverts as much as anyone... I'm also the worst channel hopper too. I also hate the fact I have to pay to own my television - £131 annually - $200 or so. But the BBC consistently produces some great programs which I appreciate. It's a choice (apart from in the UK) - pay a _big_ premium for a few channels without adverts, or accept adverts on all.
Hmmm. Go read a book?
Yeah, I still have a few of the 1960's/1970's paperbacks with those annoying ad inserts in the middle....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I wouldn't be surprised if I see the death of commericials in my lifetime, wholly replaced with product placement in the shows themselves.
I'm not sure which is worse.
...like the best reason ever to get a PVR. Those 30 sec ads must be extremely boring for normal viewers.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I own a digital cable box and a PVR in Toronto Canada.
It resets often and forces you to go through tonnes of menu's now when you use certain of these instead of restoring you to your original channel it switches you to an all advertising channel which advertises other cable services.
I'm sure viewership on this channel is very high as you are continually reset to it (After finishing a recorded show for example) but the cable company is monopolizing it, so when you're not actively watching you are bombarded by ads.
Doesn't totally ofset but it's something.
There are a lot of people here either complaining that they'll have to see the ad or rejoicing that they will be able to skip the ad easier.
My question to them is what do they want as a business model for television?
There are several possibilities.
1) No commercials, this is synonymous with the people who claim that should advertising adapt to become more interesting so people will willingly watch as I simply don't buy that argument (viewer interest is one of their primary motivations already).
In order to achieve content without commercials you need modifications to the system.
One is to pay significantly more for your television service (satellite or cable), I don't know how much more but likely not a trivial amount.
Another is to fund television primarly through things such as DVD sales (the broadcast of the show serves as an ad for the DVD), of course to increase DVD sales you need to reduce syndication and/or do something like make the season finale available only on the DVD version.
Of course another option is just to give the shows smaller budgets. Of course while some costs such as big name actors will come down without much of a loss of quality a significantly lower budget will inexorably lead to lower quality television overall.
Another way the industry could go is 2) Forced full length commercials, this is in the way of DRM and wouldn't allow you to fast forward through commercials (and probably a bigger war on bittorrent). Doesn't require the industry to adapt much but isn't very fun for us.
3) The final way is to fit in the advertising some other way.
One way here is product placement, if they can't get you to watch the ad seperatly from the show they may just make it part of the show. Of course this is done already but I see it becoming a lot more prevalent if traditional 15/30 second ads are no longer an option.
Another way is what they've described, substituting a minor ad in for the skipped one. The effect will be smaller and have some of the effects in 1) but it doesn't force the user to spend more time than they would have on ads already.
I'm sure I've missed some scenarios and made some logical errors but that's my quick take on this.
I stole this Sig
Dont they know the reason we have our DVR is so we dont miss the commericals?!?!
How about "I'm paying forty bucks a month for my cable bill, and wasn't that supposed to let them get by without ads?"
How about "I'm only paying for my cable bill because Roadrunner is faster than DSL, I haven't watched TV in 10 years?"
How about "I don't care what business model they use, because I don't care if they stay in business?"
How about "Isn't it their job to figure out how to make me want to watch it?"
How about "These are supposed to be the smartest and best motivators on the planet, and they can't figure out how to motivate me to watch their ad?"
They're already begrudging the 20-22 minutes of non-advertising they have to show in each half an hour of eyeball time. They don't need excuses to cut into it, they do it anyway. Turn off your non-interactive video-game and go outside. Or at least play some Katamari Damarci.
i love advertisements, they make the world a much peaceful and safer place, help fight terrorist by making them watch obnoxious ads.
Yeah, that's it. We want people to buy our stuff, so we're going to annoy the s%!t out of them until they do! The reason we want to get around commercials is because advertising today is ANNOYING and invasive, not because we mind hearing about products. I'm sure that most people would not mind hearing about products that they are interested in IF it was on their terms! Those who don't want to be advertised to ever most likely will not ever have advertising work on them, so why bother?!
Slant
Between the Spaces
Wow! I hope all the advertisers adopt this strategy! WOOHOO!!! What a wonderful development. Now it will SUPER-EASY to make a commercial-skipper!
Keep up the good work fellas!
It's kind of silly to even be preaching to the choir (for the most part.) I am a firm believer in capitalism, but free trade needs to;
A) Be Free (freedom to operate unbonded, but only inside of fair limits designed to prevent business from damaging or undermining the greater well being of society, and the operating space of business at large... eg. cyanide pool gold mining make a few people rich, kills tons of wildlife, and leaves a ecological disaster for others to clean up afterwards... so in fact it's not a business, but a machine designed to pump tax dollars from the general public into the pockets of a greedy few... this is a perfect example of business that exists outside the boundary of workable freedom.)
B) Be Responsible (Do good for it's own sake, even when it isn't going to make the stock holders all warm and fuzzy. When given the choice of cleaning up an ungodly toxic mess or using the third world as a toilet, even needs debate, something has gone horribly wrong with our collective thinking. Holding the bottom line, above respecting or honoring human dignity, morality, and/or the future quality of life for any and all people is indefensible. Having business or government that doesn't honor this simple truth is a disgrace.)
The minute your government becomes BUSINESS-R-US, it stops doing important things like;
A) Representing it's people B) Creating a workable environment in which people and business can freely and fairly operate C) Managing the freedom, fulfillment, growth, and development of it people and their enterprises D) Managing the workability of it's relationship to all other people in the world
Nature has demonstrated with blinding clarity, that you separate the critical but antithetical parts of an organism from one another... that is why you'll never see a physical creature with it's rectum doubling as it's mouth. I suggest that having a society (and specifically a government) that hasn't made this simple distinction makes indelably clear that we as a people, need to get dramatically wiser, and with all due haste. Said simply, the walls between government, business, religion, and the growth and development of a diverse and moral citizenry, must be high, wide, and vigilantly guarded. The alternative is disaster, and we are all living that disaster this very moment.
Samantha Carter has inexplicably used a Dell for years!
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I've been expecting the better advertisers to start hooking the beginning and ends of commercials with either key info or something that makes you want to watch it. A really clever admaker will create one that looks normal at normal speed, but does something different and interesting at fast forward speeds. Granted, that will be really hard to do, but I'll bet we see it someday.
I'm also expecting the first and last commercials of a commercial break to be worth more than the middle ones, but that's probably already the case --- even before tivo, people used commercials for bathroom breaks and other alternate activities. I was muting them for well over 10 years before I got a Tivo, but you still had to keep an eye out for when the show came back on.
And of course, you've got product placement, from clever and subtle, to the kinda clever, yet brute force style of cisco in Eureka a couple weeks ago: Stark's conferencing system threw up a huge cisco logo when he shut it off: outlandishly obvious, yet that's exactly the way a lot of software works, so it actually fit into the story, even if it was a little distracting for a moment. Yet, the advertisers actually want you to notice them. It's an effective way, if you don't overdo it, but I'm afraid that bit of heroin is going to be too irresistable and end up destroying a series or two in the future. I just hope it's not Eureka, which has to be one of the best shows ever...
Gotta love that TiVo... no evil "Jump" button so you have to fast forward instead. That's why I'm still using a couple of first-generation ReplayTVs.
Newspaper, Magazine, and web advertising is very effective, yet it is easily skipped. What some of the television networks are trying to do is the equivilent of forcing my eyeballs to read ads that I am not interested in. Such an approach is rather short-sighted, because it will only turn their viewers away.
The networks really need to take a scientific approach to advertising and observe how real DVR users behave. They can try many different advertising methods and see which ones allow for messages to stick.
Some methods that might be effective:
No, I will not work for your startup