A slightly smaller number of passive impressions is a better value for the advertiser than something that’s going to be resented by the consumer.
Television advertising is effective because it reaches a huge number of people. It’s actually rather trivial that a certain percentage of people avoid commercials as much as possible – they still make an impression, through simple saturation. Even if you’re fast-forwarding or flipping, chances are you’ve seen the ad before and register it again. Even if you try to avoid commercials, you’re going to be exposed to them once or twice, so those re-impressions are going to recall everything about the ad that matters to you, anyway.
I know there’s an annoying ad for McDonald’s new “deli-style” sandwiches running, and I’ve only seen it in its entirety (with sound) maybe once. Still, whether it’s muted or being fast-forwarded through, or whatever, it just takes a glimpse to remind me “McDonald’s has a new menu item,” which is all it’s supposed to do. My awareness of the product wouldn’t be increased by an intrusive way of making sure that I saw the commercial in full every time it aired, only my irritation.
If it gets to the point that the majority of people aren’t seeing commercials at all, then they’re going to have to do something, but right now the number of people who watch TV and totally avoid commercials is insignificant – and these people aren’t likely to be persuaded by television advertising, anyway – except possibly negatively.
I would download all the shows I actually watch and then my TV would become the movie viewing monitor and I’d cancel cable all together.
And of course by downloading them, I’ll probably be able to see it without commercials at all, since someone will have stripped them out before putting the show out for download.
So, have we decided yet if we’re getting all het up for no reason, or is there a legitimate danger here? I want to inform all my friends and family if there’s a chance of not being able to surf past commercials looming in the future. And put me in the “buh-bye network tv” camp if this ever become reality. I don’t like tv that much now - I am so irritated by the bugs and the station ids and all the other crap that’s littering the tv screen when I’m trying to watch something that I’m just about done with tv now, anyway. We’d probably go the dvd and/or download route, too. And I’d get much more reading done - up from my current, lackadaisical two books a week now!
Do you people who don’t flip away from commercials not have the timed skip function on your tv? I loooove it - set it, and get the heck out of Dodge! It also lets you know which stations have egregiously long commercial breaks - I mean, seven minutes? (WB and TBS, I’m looking at you.)
This is probably just a ‘preventative’ patent. Philips isn’t stupid - they know a device like this wuold be universally hated. But what about in 20 years?
The fact is, the advertising model of TV financing is under serious pressure - from DVDs, from downloaded shows, and most especially PVRs. I have a PVR, and I NEVER watch commercials. Ever. Can’t remember the last time I sat through one. When we want to watch a show, we intentionally wait until it’s been on for 10 or 15 minutes before we sit down and watch. Then you just hit ‘record’ on the PVR, and it goes back in its buffer and starts recording from the time the show started. That 10 minutes gives us the buffer we need to skip through all the commercials.
The only thing saving the advertising model right now is that PVRs are only in a small percentage of households. But that will change. The things are so damned useful that they’ll be ubiquitous in a few years. Then what happens to advertising?
At that point, if we start to see a serious move to a ‘pay as you go’ model of TV watching, prices could increase dramatically. How many people would then agree to have NBC for free, as long as the commercial flag was turned on? You want it turned off? Fine - $10/mo, please.
I can easily see this happening. Or another option - if the flag is off, you can watch the show - in a window with advertising around it like the tickers on CNN. Or without the flag, commercials will come on on the regular schedule they do now - but the show won’t pause. It’ll just be reduced to a window in the corner of the screen or something (the commercials would have to be silent).
Make the alternatives painful/expensive enough, and suddenly this little commercial flag doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
Of course, things could go other ways. Maybe network TV will die out, and we’ll be left with HBO and a plethora of shows produced to go directly to DVD or download. Who knows?
What I do know is, we’re probably in for some fairly radical changes in how we watch TV in the next 10 years. Philips is just covering the bases.
This technology would work very well in places like hotels. I just stayed in a place that had a very limited selection of cable TV and a long, long list of movies and TV programs I could purchase if I wished to do so. Why not something obnoxious like making people watch commercials? If I were trying to market this, I’d start with places like hotels, i.e. places with essentially captive audiences. Furthermore, I would create a situation where the lock on the TV would only occur during commercials having a particular code (for which the advertiser would pay a big upcharge). Whether this shows up on TV’s is a matter of how much the TV mfr’s are interested in taking kickbacks from big advertisers.
CJ
That wouldn’t work. All it would take would be one news report on the boycott of say…Hostess cupcakes for locking their commercials and it would die. The negative publicity for any company caught locking their ads would be deadly. Public outrage at the assault on their remotes would lead to a plunge in corporate profits nobody could ignore.