Commercial breaks on WatchESPN

Cafe Society
1

Since I became a cable cord-cutter, I’ve been using the WatchESPN streaming service (borrowing someone’s cable account) for my football viewing needs. It works pretty fine, except for the commercial breaks, which are weird:

The commercials are not the same as you get watching ESPN on cable; or even watching in on Sling TV (I conducted a side-by-side test). Each commercial break consists of a promo for ESPN and commercials for Toyota, and only Toyota. And it’s the same goddam commercials: Corolla, with “Mr Brooks won’t be in today”, and Rav 4 with that smarmy couple and their “randomly artistic vehicle”, “romantic ambience vehicle” banter. After every freakin’ punt, touchdown, time out. By the 2nd quarter I want to throw a brick through the screen.

Any idea why this happens? Why they can’t get more than one sponsor for their app stream?

2

That’s how the ads are on Hulu, too. I also find it strange that on a medium where you can easily directly advertise to whoever is watching the stream, the service can only sell two ads.

3

Might be that there just aren’t that many advertisers willing to pay to be there. Yahoo recently got the rights to stream the Bills-Jags NFL game in London, and the advertisers paid less than one-tenth of what it would cost for an ad on a normal broadcast game. (And hey, the only top-10 advertiser there was… Toyota!)