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."

Re:That'll suck...

[russotto]

I like this idea. Sounds like a commercial-flagging algorithm could easily detect it and skip every single frame in the recording. Did I mention I have a mythbox?

it would, but ...

[joeyspqr]

"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

Except for us MythTV owners!

[gameboyhippo]

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!

When will it stop?

[Whammy666]

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.

Wouldn't more interesting adds be the answer?

[AndyG314]

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.

Same old, Same old

[suprcvic]

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.

Good.

[JustNiz]

It sounds like the perfect signal for PVR software to watch for in order to skip commercials automatically.

Re:The message will be..

[mcmonkey]

The message will be...

CONSUME

Insanity

[TheWoozle]

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.

Honestly

[Kesch]

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.

Do it the "stargate" way

[captainstupid]

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.

Re:When will it stop?

[EllynGeek]

I do wonder. How do such dim, unimaginative people hold jobs? You'd think even a TV exec could figure out that

1. When you've seen a commercial 100 times, you're probably tired of it
2. Even more so if it's a product you have no interest in
3. Which is probably 95% of all ads- I don't know the real numbers, but you can look at any random ad and figure out pretty easily that the product will appeal to a small fraction of viewers
4. Even for products you're interested in, you're not going to watch every single damned ad they run
5. Making viewers hate you doesn't sell product

I wish natural selection were more effective.

That's the easy way out

[Minwee]

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.

Re:Go Go!

[MindStalker]

Oh yes. And remind me what happend to that company? Oh yea they pretty much got sued out of existance.

First line in TFA says it all

[just_another_sean]

"designed to combat viewers using digital recorders to avoid commercials."

It's on biatch!

Cost

[lymond01]

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?

Re:Wow

[AxelBoldt]

There is no escaping them. What do we do?

Get yourself a library card and kill your TV.

Re:Wow

[sobachatina]

What do we do?

Hmmm. Go read a book?

I think it is amusing that people seem to think that they have to watch TV for some reason. Movies, popular music, and TV are so ingrained in our culture that it doesn't seem to occur to people that you can in fact entertain yourself without them.

Learn to play an instrument- that will keep you happily entertained for the rest of your life.

I understand that this doesn't answer your rhetorical question. I wanted to rant and this seemed like a good place to do it.

Re:Wow

[Digicrat]

I always fastforward through the commercials on my DVR, but the speed is such that I normally see at least a couple of frames of each commercial - and I actually like it that way.

Every now and then I might see the flash of a commercial that might look intersting and will actually go back to watch it - albeit not often. If they actually made more commercials that were (a) interesting, (b) actually relevant to something, (c) not repeated a zillion times, or (d) didn't include dozens of 'enhancement' and diet commercials that nobody wants to see, then maybe commercials would be more effective, but as it is, most people just ignore the commercials, even when they can't skip them.

Product placement has definetly been on the rise lately, and will definetly continue to. Commercials are a dying medium - nobody wants to see them most of the time, and on-demand and PVRs are making it easier than ever to skip them. When done right, product placement is unobtrusive and can actually add to the realism of the show, or for that matter video game (an area that's starting to grow exponentially).

Of course, added product placement will also eventually mean less reruns on tv when networks can't change or re-charge for the ads in old shows . . .

Re:For G

[PitaBred]

If it takes moving pictures of a certain type to keep your kid happy, it's time to get them outside more and away from the babysitting box.

Re:When will it stop?

[Whammy666]

The networks were able to make profits 10+ years ago when a 60 minute show typically had only 10 minutes of commercials. Now it's 22 minutes of ads in a 60 minute show. I'm sorry, but that's just plain greed talking. Nobody is denying that a non-subscription network needs ad revenue to survive, but there is such a thing as going too far.

Subscription TV has now become worse than network TV in terms of ad saturation. The end result is that I watch very little TV at all anymore. There are so many ads that most TV shows no longer have any continuity to them because of all the interruptions.

Saturating the broadcast full of ads does three things: Increases revenue, decreases programming cost because the shows are much shorter as a result of all the ads, and it pisses off the viewers which lowers the ratings of the show which in turn forces the broadcaster to add more advertisement to make up the difference in lost revenue which pisses of the viewers still further.

Re:Wow

[WilliamSChips]

Books are great but sometimes you just don't want to read. I don't know why that's so hard to understand for some people.

Re:Wow

[Quino]

I've been wondering for some time if the "high" road wouldn't actually be more effective as well: make commercials entertaining.

It's rare, but there are commercials that are so funny, witty, etc. that I actually find myself rewinding my Tivo to watch them in their entirety, or to show it to someone ("I shove my beer inside the crack of a turkey!").

Though I cannnot speak from experience, a friend who studied marketting did once mention that this is much more common in Europe: sometimes commercials just have interesting scenes even though they have nothing to do with the prodcut. I know I've seen surreal commercials for British Airways, for instance, that never even showed an airplane. In fact, if it didn't say British Airways (Airlines?) at the end, you would never know who paid for the commercial.

Re:For G

[bill_kress]

And what happened to reading. Kids who read on their own before preschool end up with significantly better vocabularies and tend to be much more articulate--they also have a lot less trouble with schoolwork.

It requires a lot of work on the parents' part to read to the kid every night from the time they are a baby to get them to take to it, but if that's what it takes to have a smart kid, isn't it worth it?