Google Ad Revenue To Top UK Broadcaster's 136
GoingTurbo writes, "By the end of the year advertisers in the UK will have spent more money advertising on Google than they did on the UK's Channel Four TV station. The article suggests we will see the slow erosion of traditional television broadcasting, and with it, the death of the great TV ads of the past. The article offers an alternative possibility for the future of television." From the article: "The US has been forced to contend with heinously patronizing and crude TV advertising for decades, but the UK's advertising industry has managed to create art out of the dirty act of selling. Some of the best short films of the last century have been television advertisements... Even if some of these make the transition... online, they'll lack the spectacle of their TV equivalent."
Who cares about channel four ads? (Score:1)
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Re:Who cares about channel four ads? (Score:4, Informative)
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in actual fact though, the BBC do advertise, but only for their own services and products. I direct your attention to the 'radio times' adverts, 'gardeners world' adverts, adverts for new shows coming soon etc etc. I'd rather have adverts and not pay the license; the time between programs would stay about the same.
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The BBC are probably bringing in advertising on bbcnews.com quite shortly for non-UK people. At the moment, most of the bill is funded by the propaganda, I mean, foreign office.
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How d'you figure that? Every channel advertises it's own programs either side of the adverts, and none of them less so than the bbc. Buy a dvd with a bbc produced show on it and see how long the half hour shows are (usually around 28 minutes), and then look at the ones that run at half an hour on channel 4 (the simpsons on the bbc was a twenty or twenty five minute show if memory serves).
Go to the USA
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Typical US advertising for a half hour program goes:
Ads
Intro credits
Ads
Programme first half
Ads
Programme second half
Ads
Ending credits
Ads
Typical UK advertising on a half hour slot:
Ads
Intro credits
Programme first half
Ads
Programme second half
Ending credits
Ads
Generally, the ad breaks are shorter, too. When I lived in the US, I practically gave up watching TV because th
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In the words of Raplh Wiggum, "That's unpossible!".
US shows of late take about 22 minutes (down from 25 some years back). Two 22 minutes episodes do not fit into a half-hour. So, either they snipped parts of the show (e.g. 1 min of intro, 2 min of credits, and 4 minutes randomly) or it wasn't in a half-hour.
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Lions and tigers and bears; oh my! (Score:1)
"the death of the great TV ads of the past"
My god!
How will we ever survive without the "great" TV ads of the past?!??!?
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I'm pretty sure the original short [imdb.com] predated the gas adverts - although its probably the gas adverts that enabled most people to see them. I'm sure advertising work does a lot to support outfits like Aardman.
Maybe the web will kill off all the crass adverts that everybody ignores (so that people can ignore them on the web instead) and just leave the nicely made subtle and ironic ones (+5 wishful thinking).
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Everyone thought the electricity ads were for British Gas!
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Well, back in those days when you got gas from the gas board and electricity from the electricity board (Ok, they'd been de-nationalised but it was a while before there was any real choice) - I never did see the point for ads for gas and electricity. Were you expected to think "Oh, nice parrot - I think I'll t
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The worst, however, are the cheesy locally made or made by the cable company commercials. Good grief people, if you're going to make your own ads find someone who knows what they're doing to help you. If there was a way to pick up my TV and wring it out every time I see one of
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Well I was happy when I discovered the current season of SG-1 was available from iTunes. Put aside any DRM opinions, I paid $40 to have have the season automatically downloaded to my computer as episodes come out. I also did the same for Atlantis. (I did not buy Galactica because I personally think it sucks, but that's my opinion.
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That's crumbelievable!
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Here's to advertisers who have a sense of humour!
I'll give you a few (Score:2)
The Honda ads where the people looked like their cars
(YouTube 'em. I don't have access at work)
Advertising for everyone (Score:1)
Just as the PC meant a computer for everyone, Google means everyone can advertise.
So the interesting question is not whether people are spending more on Internet advertising, but whether businesses are spending less on TV.
I, for my part, hope that the answer is yes.
TV is mass media in its worst form, and targets the lowest common denominator.
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Local businesses are advertising less on the cheap, fringe stations and seem to be going back to the larger, more dominant stations even if they are more expensive per second of airtime.
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TV is still king when it comes to certain companies where brand strength is critical. Companies like Coca-cola or Pepsi don't really advertise much online. That's starting a little with Google Videos and coming down the line for YouTube.
Adsense doesn't do much for a product that doesn't have anything to offer online. Sure there's potential there to do things like start delivering McDonalds (or any local restaurant) ads to people shortly be
Tivo like solutions not popular in UK (Score:5, Interesting)
The reasons why DVR solutions are of course more complex then the point I am making here, but I would argue one of the reasons is that we have two terrestrial channels that have no adverts (bbc1 and bbc2) and three (ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5) which we grumble about, but honestly aren't that invasive - compared to American television.
With the advent of digital tv we actually have access to a great many more channels, but for the most part all the bbc channels are ad free - it's what we pay a tv license for.
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added to note an error in what I previously wrote. Damn I wish slashdot had a 2 minute edit feature like digg, it's about the only place they get o
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The States on the other
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Be glad about it. In Germany, we pay forced license fees for ARD and ZDF (public TV stations), but they do have ads and, what's worse, product placement, and a lot of their content is crap (folk music to copies of commercial TV formats), not like BBC.
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There are other PVRs out there for Freeview/analogue users but the strength of Tivo was its ability to record based on a TV guide.
Since the market for these DVRs is fragmented there hasn't been such a push for people to buy a PVR.
PVRs are about a whole lot more than just ad free TV. They're great for watching sports where you can replay live TV.
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Got a reference for that? Cause I got one that says you're wrong : http://www.garysargent.co.uk/tivo/TIVOvsSKY.htm [garysargent.co.uk]
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That's funny the BBC channels I (very) occasionally watch are full of advertising for other BBC products.
Not to mention all the product placement.
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Thanks the the fact that most stuff on the BBC is going to be shown on some other, ad-funded channel at some point, shows are an odd number of minutes long. So they fill the 2 mins between shows with stuff
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I, personally, am more interested in not having to be in front of an appliance at a certain time of day/night. For instance, last night I watched Bones as it was being aired, but then decided that I was too tired to watch Lost (one of my favorite sh
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it's not about ads (Score:2)
Even if I couldn't skip ads I still wouldn't be without a TiVo.
Because it catches all my shows I want to watch and then I can watch them when I get home.
I don't even have kids, but I don't see how families could get by without a PVR. What happens when you're watching a show live and your baby starts crying?
There are many shows I watch that I barely know when they're on. They're on when I get home and feel like watching the
I dont believe in the death of TV (Score:2, Insightful)
Usually what you get on the Web is : Video Games, Movies, IT solution, Websites... Things people who surf are interested in.
And you get on TV : Food, Detergent, Soap, Cars,
Additionnally, TV got some help from the web : Now everytime a major TV serie come out, there is a dedicated website to create a buzz and provide some informations to get more people
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The fun thing about advertising on the internet is that what you look at is what you see in advertisments. It is much easier to target adds when you are on a gardening website (http://www.gardenweb.com/ [gardenweb.com] refresh it a couple times and look at what comes up, I doubt you will see adds for tech gadgets or pr0n) then if you are watching a sitcom.
Yes, it used to be the case where you almost entierly had techies and computer savie people on the internet. With the popularity of broadba
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Hit preview before you submit....
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And you get on TV : Food, Detergent, Soap, Cars, ... Things a whole family needs on a day-to-day basis.
Beer!!! Don't forget beer, a crucial family need... Yeah... 8-)
Thats the reason for french google? (Score:1)
No wonder french president Jacques Chirac has plans for a European search engine [digitalmediaasia.com] called "Quaero".
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I didn't know about this Quaero engine.
That article says it's being built by companies and such, but is it an actual government project?
That just seems weird to me. I know if the US Gov. tried to put together something to topple Google, everyone would be screaming about government bias and such. If it is a French Gov. project, isn't anyone worried about that? I'd have to think people would be a little naive to think that any particular government was above tinkering in their own interest.
USA! USA! USA! (Score:2)
What do this snaggle-toothed limey think he's doing, slandering our great American advertising industry? There is indeed a cream [google.com] that rises to the top [wikipedia.org] of the business [careerbuilder.com], raising TV [about.com] commercials above the mere act of shilling.
Part of the reason (Score:2)
If you run a car dealership then you can't afford to run TV ads because you'll be targetting people who live many hours away from you.
Most of the particularly distasteful US commercials are more small businesses. I think people like Geico and Apple have pretty clever ads.
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There are plenty of large company ads that make me laugh out loud, and I like to think I'm not a complete dolt. You're certainly right about the local car dealer ads though. They are most certainly the bottom of the barrel and account for way too much ad time.
I saw that Honda commercial you're talking about once before. It is certainly cool... but we do, occasionally, get really creative marketing on TV here. I think we can agree that genius is pretty rare anywhere you go.
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Best films - get real!! (Score:2)
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=short+film+festiv al&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB [google.co.uk]
The one I work seen plenty of attendance growth in the last few years.
YouTube et. al. are all well and good but there's something about a few beers in the bar with the filmmakers, crew and appreciative audience you just can't get with a download.
$200,000 per minute does price plenty of folk out of the market for TV advertis
As tick followed tock followed tick followed tock (Score:1)
However, the majority were total mind sucking crap, which is why I don't watch them any more.
But do I see Gooogle ads? Nope. Adblocked. I think online adverts are more easily blocked than TV ads (especially when we factor in product placement), so although Google do well now, things could change very quickly.
Has this guy ever watched UK TV? (Score:3, Insightful)
What a load of rubbish. Art, indeed. Yes, the high art that is Car Insurance adds and refinancing company adds - I swear, 50% of adds on UK tv consist of these two "products". A nodding dog, a red car... has art really become this?
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You know when an advert is art when someone makes a Dance Remix [youtube.com] of it
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Back on the real channels we still get the likes of the Bravia, Guinness and Honda adverts. It's all down to the perceived demographic of the crap you're watching, really.
Wrong. (Score:1)
Son, please. (Score:2)
And I'd suggest then that the article is wrong. How about, I don't know, just MORE ADS EVERYWHERE, all the time? Television isn't going anywhere, but it is losing its monopoly on moving images in the home. So the shifting around is going to be natural. That doesn't mean moving images will s
Alien Bladerunner (Score:2)
Let us all mourn (Score:2)
Let us all mourn the death of great TV ads. Surely something to be missed, along with the previous passing of the Spanish Inquisition, the bubonic plague, the Iron Maiden, and having boiling oil poured on you from cathedral tops by irate bellringers.
UK and US television are very differient animals. (Score:2)
Secondly, the top stations (BBC1 and BBC2) have no ads what so ever, they are funded by a per household tv tax. Only somewhat 'new' channels like Four have ads and they are often regarded as somewhat 'tacky'. Maybe I'm missing something, but al
Re:UK and US television are very differient animal (Score:2)
When the UK has the BBC (which broadcasts Dr. Who to Glastonbury (the only things from the UK I watch)), I doubt there is much advertising on TV in the UK.
The BBC news site http://news.bbc.co.uk/ [bbc.co.uk] is the best website for new since it DOES NOT HAVE ADS.
On the flip side though, even Dr. Who is really tacky and barely barely worth watching. All good really good high-budget TV series are from the US with the TV advertisment model.
Some of the Channel 4 stuff I've watched always gave me the impression that U
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I suspect that is vaguely deliberate...... If you ever saw the originals you'd probably understand why. If they over modernised it there would be a massive backlash. No seriously.. Death on the streets, arson, massive - widespread public unrest.....
Sounds like a case for The Doctor....
Re:UK and US television are very differient animal (Score:1)
Channel Four is literally channel 4 on the dial for the whole country.
Never heard of S4C [wikipedia.org]? Also, try using the "now and next" pages on teletext sometime - you'll be suprised how often most of it just says "regional variations".
Re:UK and US television are very differient animal (Score:2)
Really ? So what do you call all those little 30 second slots they keep having which are blatantly advertising BBC products then ?
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In the past, a half hour show would have one ad break. A one hour show would have two or three.
Now, on C4, any American show (they don't seem to do it with the British ones) will have an ad break as soon as the titles finish and then another every couple of minutes later.
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OFCOM stipulate that on channels 3 to 5, no more than 1 ad break is permitted in a scheduled broadcast of up to 44 minutes, 2 breaks in a broadcast up to 59 minutes and 3 in a broadcast up to 89 minutes. Furthermore, there must be at least 20 minutes between internal breaks, a slight reduction in this time being permitted if it aids continuity.
So, your typical US drama on Channel 4 will have a maximum of 3 ad breaks.
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Re:UK and US television are very differient animal (Score:2)
Outside of primetime this is correct. The reason is simple, not enough people watch TV outside of primetime any more to justify the spend by the big companies. The airtime is soaked up by these insurers & loan sharks who will spend the vast majority of their marketing budget on TV ads. Similarly, Channel Four is possibly the third most popular channel in the UK. They have always commanded smaller audiences than commercial rival
Re:UK and US television are very differient animal (Score:1)
Correct.
Firstly, the country is geographically smaller, so it's all national. There are no local affiliates. Channel Four is literally channel 4 on the dial for the whole country.
WRONG. There are local variations for most of the main "terrestrial" channels.
Secondly, the top stations (BBC1 and BBC2) have no ads what so ever, they are funded by a per household tv tax.
WRONG. BBC2 is a minority channel.
Onl
Re:UK and US television are very differient animal (Score:2)
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Since it's the internet....
Although there is admittedly some regional content, you have no idea the used car sales pitches you are bring spared. There is nothing akin the to US affiliate system in the UK.
I was too lazy to lookup what the top stations actually are. Point about TV tax was what mattered. Most Americans are very surpris
Bullshit. (Score:2)
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Though I never understand while it's always an either/or when it comes to these things (either you're watching TV or you're surfing the web) - surely you can have the TV on and surf the web at the same time.
Is this true? (Score:2)
I, being an American, have never watched TV in another country (watchign TV when traveling, for anythign other then pure news, seems silly to me). Are the commercials in the UK actualy good and worth watching? Commercials are one of t
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the carling black label ones (very funny beer ads), the levi's spaceman ad (all those levi's ones were good but i presume they were international), even bloody shake and vac (which most people in their thirties still know all the words to, despite being over twenty years ago).
you could ALWAYS tell immediately if it was a british ad, an american one or (the lowest of the low) a european one, simply from the quality.
i've not seen an ad on the TV for about ten years that has made me
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European Ads: Ferrero Roche ? If so say no more.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2VCfOC69jc [youtube.com]
or the banned xbox one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu8456pVSLI [youtube.com]
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There are perhaps a couple of ads a year which are amusing, the first time you see them, but in the main they're just a nuisance and quite likely indistinguishable from American Ads. Having said that some of the most irritating are those for cosmetic products with the stupid, inane, catchphrase stuck on the end of some insipid dross showing women using the product and
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Take for example the contrast between car ads in the US - where they are almost uniformly loud, in your face, and obnoxious - with a recent Honda Civic ad in the UK: http://tvadverts.blogspot.com/2006/01/honda-civic- choir.html [blogspot.com]
Indeed - it's on You
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ethics? (Score:1)
In a way i PREFER ads to be really bad. I can go make a cup of tea, maybe give that book i'm reading another chance to hook me. Granted, i could do this with "great" ads too, but if i am sucked in to watching them at least if they're rubbish i can fall back onto a vague sense of self superiority to smirk my way through them. Good adverts are..insidious. Advertising is a huge business, there's tons of Psychologi
The ads (Score:2)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_p7_55d8u5E [youtube.com]
The Hovis ad:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CFLBvLxLJMI [youtube.com]
Guinness de-evolution ad:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-350824356 8549381115 [google.com]
as pete so rightfully said... (Score:2)
"slow erosion" already well underway (Score:2)
take, for example, Lost [go.com], Jericho [cbs.com], and Heroes [nbc.com]. three different networks, prime-time big-money shows, and each of their networks distributes the latest episode online for free. sure, it's in some stupid flash player, which diminishes the experienc
Revenue from advertising? (Score:2)
I think I've mentioned before, this sort of data is a lot like the Addys (ad award like Grammys) which are issued based on peer review rather than effectiveness. Who cares if the ad is really great - if it didn't cause anyone to go purchase the product or service what good is it as an ad?
I tell you who has the most effective advertising campaign right now
The Age of Persuasion (Score:2)
Terry O'Reilly and The Age of Persuasion [typepad.com] is an excellent radio program about advertising. O'Reilly tracks the evolution of advertising into the internet age and talks about the implicit bargain that there has always been between advertisers and audience: that the audience gets something of value in return for the message, and how this is in danger of being broken in some internet models (popups etc) and has been broken (by e.g. highway billboards which most advertising professionals loathe) in the past.
Dated ana.lysis (Score:2)
The US has been forced to contend with heinously patronizing and crude TV advertising for decades
As someone who used to live in the UK and now lives in the US I'd say this is a very dated view. It was true, perhaps even as little as 10 years ago, but now it's a bit misleading.
There is quite a bit of wit, subtlety, humor, even dare I say it art in the best US TV advertising these days. In fact when I visit the UK I often find adverts who seem to have abandoned those things for straight out absurdity, incon
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I'm confused here. You've Been Tangoed was fifteen years ago. I was at primary school at the time. Everyone came in the day after that ad first aired and started slapping people in the face at random...
The future of ads (Score:2)
Nicole... (Score:2)
?????
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