Monday, June 25, 2012

Come Monday...Integrated Advertising


While trying to watch (my vision is still significantly [impaired]) an episode of [Through the Wormhole] on [OnDemand], some thoughts on how to improve televised advertising came floating through.  If you are not familiar with watching shows on OnDemand, some of them do have some advertising included, but the advertising blocks are usually much shorter than what we are subjected to on regular TV.  Furthermore, the advertisements are often much better matched to the content of the show.  In fact, they were a few times during that Through the Wormhole episode when I did not realize that I was now watching a commercial for Google instead of some more of the show about [quantum computing].

The more I paid attention to those thoughts, the more it made sense that the same thing would be of great benefit to both the advertiser and the potential consumer, as well as the broadcast networks, on regular TV.  For advertising is still being presented in scheduled blocks 3-7 minutes long, which was greatly appreciated by most in the past, I am sure.  For this gave the viewer an opportunity to go get a snack or take a bathroom break—much to the frustration of the advertisers paying for the show to be on the air in the first-place.

With the advent of the [DVR] age, we now have the ability to pause a show anytime we want to.  We have had this ability on a somewhat more limited basis for quite some time, actually.  For one could pause any show they had previously recorded on their [VCR].



Of course, one of the main selling points for a VCR or DVR is having the ability to skip over the commercials, but with them being placed in much smaller blocks of no more than 90 seconds at a time, it wouldn’t be worth trying to skip over them.  That is, unless you are better at stopping when the show comes back on than I am.

Besides, if commercials were better matched with the shows they were being aired during, such as a commercial for a fine wine during a gourmet cooking show, more may be more inclined to watch them, but if more commercials were as great as that old Tivo commercial, it wouldn’t matter when they were aired.

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8 comments:

  1. I hate commercials but you do make an excellent point. They should match the advertising to what is being aired. Makes sense

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  2. Interesting idea that if the commercials were shorter, we wouldn't bother to skip. But that might mean more blocks of commercials, which for me would probably mean I didn't feel like watching the show because it was interrupted too often.

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  3. Thanks for stopping by again, my dear Ann!!! I actually enjoy great commercials, but far too few commercials truly are.

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  4. Thanks for stopping by again, my dear Jenny. No, it is the length of the commercial blocks that I would like to see changed. For as it is now, they can go on for as long as 7 minutes, which certainly makes me want to hit the fast-forward button on the remote.

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  5. Ban adverts! SEVEN minutes of adverts is a disgrace!
    Four minutes here, four times in an hour long programme. Shocking!

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  6. Thanks for stopping by again, my dear Adullamite!!! I have been watching quite a few shows on Netlix lately, and on there, all of the newer hour-length shows are just 45 minutes long on account of there being no advertising. Older shows tend to be a little longer on account of there being less advertising time per hour years ago.

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  7. I find that if I hit the skip button 6 times I miss all the commercials and get the beginning of the show. Some channels however, run a LOT more commercials than others..evidently needing the money more I guess.

    I love my DVR. I actually tape shows that I used to watch just so I can skip all those friggin commercials. On Demand is good for shows you have missed or if you discover a new series you like and want to catch older episodes.

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  8. Thanks for stopping by again, my dear Dusty!!! If our DVR remote has a skip button, I haven't found it yet. The remote for our VCR had one, and I did use it A LOT. We haven't been taking as much advantage of the benefits to having regular shows on OnDemand as we should. Back when we had HBO, we would always check what was available on OnDemand for The Wire, The Sopranos and the like before checking when they were actually airing on the schedule, but we haven't been doing that for the shows on USA, ABC and NBC that we always try to record each week. I wonder why CBS has not got with the OnDemand program yet?

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