The Future of Advertising: Still as annoying as ever!
It’s been about about six years since I stopped watching commercial television with any sort of regularity. Along with unpredictable schedules, the random dropping of shows and shows sometimes not even making it onto our networks, television advertising was an important factor in this choice.
To me there’s nothing that ruins watching a television show more then wasting 20 minutes in the hour watching ads or cutting to ads at critical plot points throughout the episode.
Channel 10 used to particularly infuriate me with their advertising cut aways that would actually mute the last few seconds of the scene you were currently watching.
Sadly, although not unexpectedly the future of television advertising appears to be on track to be even more obtrusive, emotionally manipulative and just downright annoying then ever.
Developed by Australian company Demand Sport, the idea behind the advertising model Ad+Demand is to link advertising to emotional points in the television broadcast. Initially Ad+Demand is set to feature on sports broadcasts but there are plans to extend the model to other genres.
The first ‘live’ trial was conducted yesterday on an ESPN sports broadcast in the US.
Demand Sport co-founder and chief executive, Luke Reinehr, told the model was a simple one – people have greater recall of advertising when it is closely tied to an emotionally fulfilling moment – and sports provide such moments on an almost minute-by-minute basis.
The project could swiftly be extended to live TV and other genres ranging from entertainment to news.
When the system is released for live TV, he said, stock market reports could trigger ads that reflected the state of the market, while news programming could trigger ads related to news items.
Our lead story tonight, thirty thousand people perished when an earthquake struck off the coast of-”Do you sometimes worry about the future of your family when you’re gone? With our all inclusive life insurance packages you can take worry out of the equation and ensure your family is protected”-really amazing footage there and hopefully the rescue efforts aren’t hampered by the ongoing weather.
Our hearts and minds go out to-”Are you overweight? Unable to shed the kilos? Sick of not being able to walk through doorways? You could be a direct category one risk for heart disease, call us now for more info”- we’ll be right back with more news after the break.
Having been spoilt by HDTV broadcasts from the US which are free of advertising, watching anything less is a massive compromise to the viewing experience. Simply put emotional advertising is something I’m not willing to put up with when I sit down to watch something I’m interested in.
On one hand I appreciate the need for the advertising industry to evolve and become more efficient over time. On the other hand it seems that more and more the interests of advertisers and the interests of the viewer are becoming increasingly polarized.
The irony of course being that advertisers need viewers to see their ads, and viewers need advertisers to bankroll their favourite tv shows.
When it comes to sports broadcasts where the emotional investment might only last a few seconds, I can I guess appreciate the quick splicing of an ad just after say a goal was kicked or some other ‘dramatic’ event happens. So long as the ads were short once over it wouldn’t take long for viewers to get back into the game.
Outside of this television genre however I think there are going to be real challenges faced by advertising companies like Demand Sport. Sports fans are wildly different to your average news viewer who again are widely different to your average entertainment show viewer.
Each viewer category has it’s own demographic and individual characteristics in how they process and digest the show they are watching. This can of course be again broken down across individual shows within the same broad categories again creating more of a headache for advertisers.
“The whole concept is synchronising brand messages with a special moment in a game,” Mr Reinehr said.
“And our technology allows an advertiser to show different ads to different supporters at the same moment.
“For example, a brewery may show an upbeat ad to supporters when their teams scores and a ‘commiseration’ ad to opposition supporters at the same time.”
November 10th, 2009 at 12:57 pm Citizen-D(Quote)
There’s no advertising on Channel BitTorrent, I set my own schedule, watch shows in order and most of the time well before they are on free-to-air here in Australia.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:03 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Whilst I think it’s kind of sad a lot of Australian’s have to rely on channel BitTorrent, I think it’s something the Australian television networks could learn a lot from.
I happilly watch Media Watch from the ABC weekly online and would be happy to do the same for some of the other shows too. I think eventually piracy will drag the commercial networks here kicking and screaming into the twenty first century.
Shame they didn’t take the initiative themselves.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:09 pm Leper(Quote)
The local networks can’t compete with channel BitTorrent due to its variety and depth of programming. The best they can do is fast-track popular shows, attempting to tempt some users away from piracy. Fast-tracking is only an answer for popular shows, as niche shows simply aren’t worth bothering with from a ratings perspective.
Of course this doesn’t fix their tendency to grab overseas programs, promote them excessively, watch them fail and then either drop them mid-season or banish them to random late-night slots.
A PVR (homebrew system, Tivo or Foxtel iq) and BitTorrent are probably the best solutions to these problems, although they’re hardly ideal. BitTorrent gives you timeliness and variety, while a PVR will deal with scheduling BS and ads.