A Creative Communications Agency

The networks are finding ways to deliver more promotional content during their broadcasts, have you seen it? You probably have if you watch MTV, TBS, Discovery or the big networks in the last six months. They are finding ways to beat TiVo and DVR’s so promotional content makes it through to the viewer. How is this done? By placing promotions in the broadcasts, during the shows.

MTV runs information at the bottom of the screen. Information about the shows scheduled next and even information about the songs being played during the shows. When a song is played as the soundtrack for the show, MTV displays the artist and song title in a ticker at the bottom. TBS is actually interrupting shows to promote other shows. During Family Guy, TBS is running a promotion where comedian, Bill Engvall comes out and pauses Family Guy to tell the viewers about his new show. It may only be 5-10 seconds but it has started to make an impression on other networks.

Although most of the information embedded in the shows relates to the network or program; promotion information from companies like Ford, Coke, and Visa can’t be far behind. The networks want to ease the amount of commercial content presented to viewers because overwhelming them all at once will not be received well. How far off are the networks from turning our TV screen into an online page with banner ads, pop-ups and sponsor placements?

There is something to be said about how users on the web are accustomed to ad placements on web pages. Banner across the top and sponsors down the right side of the screen, alright, we have trained ourselves to focus on the important content area of the screen. Why couldn’t TV follow the same layout? Many stations already run tickers along the bottom of the screen for scores or headlines; they could throw a few ads in there, and make more money selling space that won’t be skipped by TiVo. Would we trade-off more in-program advertising to get rid of the long commercial breaks? Will standard TV commercials be replaced by in-program advertising that runs for the entire 30-minute program? The writers and producers would have to do more work because traditionally, a 30-minute show only has 22-minutes of actual programming content. The rest is for the advertisers and we already know how to ignore them.

Think about the web generation coming up now. Highly active web users, being presented more directed ads that are more and more focused to the individual user, it’s normal.  Someone who is under 18 right now won’t see it as a problem to have more advertising presented to them as someone who is in their 50’s. It’s about perception, what is excessive and how will the transition be made. Slow integration over a time will make it acceptable. Take a picture of the TV screen right now and then let’s see how it compares 5, 10, 15 years in the future.