I have to admit, I’m a little worried about the companies and the people that earn their living based on TV advertisements. I am seeing a gradual decline in the necessity of paying any attention to TV advertisements at all. Even the peak of SuperBowl commercial hilarity has come and gone. The consumer has undergone plenty of innovations to help them avoid commercials:
Good: services like DVR (or PVR for you Canadians, eh?) and TiVo allow you to record your favorite shows and watch them later. The bonus: you can fast forward through commercials. The advertisers aren’t crazy about this, obviously. At one point TiVo even talked about superimposing ads on the screen while you were fast forwarding or rewinding; I don’t know if they ever implemented it. In spite of the fact that I bought a lifetime subscription for my device, it died within a few days of the warranty expiration (and the license, at least at the time, was not transferable to a new device).
Better: some cable companies are offering normal television programs through their On Demand menu. Forgot to record Heroes last night? It’s okay, the cable company has your back. Missed a segment of last Thursday’s CSI? No problem, you can catch up. You usually have to wait a day or two, and you still have to fast forward through commercials, of course, but recent episodes are not lost forever.
Best: Verizon FiOS, at least in my service area, combines the best of both worlds. You can record the shows you want to watch within 24 hours (I often do this when I am going to be home late but still want to watch that night’s shows). If you want to wait a day or two, you can get most programs (minus the entire Fox lineup) from the On Demand menu. Huge bonus here: on some programs, FiOS even strips out the commercials for you. I was shocked by this the other day when several breaks in a show had no plugs at all, and a couple of breaks simply had one promo for an upcoming show on the same network. How are the advertisers okay with this? I’m not sure. There must be some kind of kickback system in place.
Now, for those of you who don’t like paying the cable or Verizon guy, web services like Hulu and Apple TV let you watch pretty much any TV episode you want; however, unlike the services above, they can force you to watch some commercials. While I cannot vouch for my fictional price points, a good business model might be something like: give me 2 minutes of commercials per video for free, 1 minute of commercials for, say, $5.99 / month, and no commercials for, say, $12.99 / month. For those that watch a lot of their TV this way, the additional cost (especially if it eliminates a cable bill) might be worth it - but expect to watch sports and other live events at a buddy’s house. Through some kind of kickback scheme, the agencies et. al. will still get their money, and as for the advertisers themselves, well, there may be a need for advertising around the video player, or for better product placement in the shows themselves.
Aaron Bertrand
Senior Data Architect, OTOlabs
http://www.otolabs.com
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It seems like there are a lot of products that could easily be placed in the content entirely, like beverages, electronics, clothing, etc. The other tactic I’d like to see is advertisements that are actually interesting to watch. Why wait for the superbowl, or the day AFTER the superbowl if it’s a good ski year, to see good commercials?
-M
I’ll make a confession. I often use fast forward instead of skip when watching recorded shows (at least those that still have the commercials). Why? In case there is a new Apple vs. PC commercial I haven’t seen, in which case I go back and watch it. Not to be a total fanboy, but I do find them to be about the only funny commercials around these days.
post was very good defined on rise and fall of tv adverstising. i think its all of internet marketing that reduce the importance of tv advertising to very great extent
Apple TV and Hulu are two entirely different services. More importantly, Apple TV does not force you to watch any commercials-ever. Thats because you pay for the content (which I am fine with). This device has fundamentally changed my TV viewing habit. I hardly ever watch programmed television any longer. The ability to port programming from my tv to my iPod, iPhone, and computer is the real game changer here. Apple’s bigger issue is how/when they introduce the cloud into the mix. This will help with access and rights management.