Local cable TV. Gee, never thought of that.
Sugar vs High Fructose Corn Syrup. I sense an upcoming Congressional battle here.
And let’s all sing along: I have a structured settlement and I NEED CASH NOW…
Haha. That’s so true. They had my job on an Air Force commercial and for a brief second even I bought into it. Then I remembered how much Iraq sucked and how I hate being cold.
My enthusiasm quickly passed.
I’ve seen print ads for nuclear. Never seen a TV ad that I can remember.
Wait, no… back in the 90’s (I was in college) I remember some spot showing a kid and his grandfather on a lake fishing and remarking about how clean the water and sky was. Then it pulled back and showed a nuclear plant on the horizon, presumably delivering power without polluting the air and water.
Of course, I see ads for Com Ed/Exelon which gets a large percentage (maybe majority) of its power via nuclear but they’re not explicitly showing the power plants in those spots.
Actually that makes sense; they’re in a brinksmanship war with Verizon Fios, DirecTV, and Dish Network (and, one supposes, shutting your TV off).
I too am suspicious of the structured settlement ads. Are there really that many people who have structured settlements that there can be multiple companies running multiple sets of ads?
The counterpart to the credit counseling services are the tax counseling services for people $10,000 or more in debt to the IRS. I secretly wonder if those services are actually a front for the IRS itself. There’s a great book (Confessions of a Tax Collector) which talked about how difficult it was for the IRS to get people to pay at least part of their debts; maybe this is their way of getting people to the table without knowing it.
Any ad for a law firm offering compensation related to any medical problem, drug, device, etc.
Mesothelioma, etc… Yeah, someone is getting paid, but it ain’t you.
They sell books on tape/CD. They advertise on every podcast I listen to. I guess podcast listeners are their “clientele”, but I can’t believe how many very diverse podcasts they sponsor.
Certain types of drugs seem to always be everywhere on TV, including but not limited to erectile dysfunction ads. There are literally zillions of drugs available for almost anything, so why do I only see a small subset of them advertised?
Likewise lawyer ads-again there has to be thousands of lawyers in this county, so why do only 2-3 local firms buy ad time on TV? Wouldn’t the others also benefit from running ads if these guys are already running theirs? So why don’t they? I used to ask my physician dad this question when I was younger, and he’d give me some vague answer.
When I was still writing for my student newspaper in college way back in the day, if we ever got a massive press package full of posters and free passes and tee shirts and shit, it was invariably for an absolute garbage movie that no right-minded person would ever pay to go see. Without exception, the amount of free stuff was inversely proportional to the quality of the production. I’ve noticed this tendency in TV and radio ads as well, with real stinkers seemingly getting a whole lot more commercial spots than they should – a buddy movie starring Rob Schneider and Pauly Shore would probably spend more on advertising than they did on making the actual movie.
Well to be honest, high fructose corn syrup is just a sugar, and not many people are like me, with a sensitivity to it that makes me end up with migraines from eating foods with it in, and in small sensible amounts it is just fine … but it is difficult to eat only small sensible amounts when they shove it into damn near every food product known to man. For diabetics, it is the Lurker in the Food that makes carb counting a pain in the ass.
As to the whole structured settlement thing … I would rather have a small dependable income that I can adjust my style of living to, than a bunch of money that once spent is gone. Not to mention bill collectors would rather work with someone with a steady but lower income than getting say 40% of a debt and then the party goes into bankrupcy.
I have spent enough time in my life between good jobs working indifferent jobs, or living on a single Navy income that I don’t have much expectation of equaling the Jones let alone keeping up with them. I am happy to have food on the table and a roof over my head [and internet access] so I really don’t need the 50" plasma TV [I don’t think we have a room in the house big enough to hold one at a watchable distance] or huge penismobile and I really dislike wearing jewelry …
They’re trying to make the whole fracking thing seem like a good idea. Yes, please pump tons of chemicals down into the ground, break up the rocks and get out natural gas plus all of that toxic waste water that you’ve got no way to treat.
Or… can you?
My favorite is the gold-and-diamond chocolate cake.
I think milk is just, please please drink more so we don’t go out of business. Are they still doing a lot of milk ads? I thought that was a 90s thing.
Can I expand that to any dating site? The free ones don’t advertise. The paid ones are usually a joke. Also, eHarmony just pisses me off. They just come off as so obnoxious. They’re just slightly less obnoxious than Zoosk who makes me want to destroy my TV.
I was going to say this. You could eat gold, but all you’d likely get out of it is gold-flecked poo.
The Goldschlager might be a decent investment if society was going down the tubes, though…
Moving to Cafe Society, where commercials are typically discussed.
Well, based on that, you’re undoubtedly over the age of 40, and quite probably over the age of 50. You (and people your age) don’t switch auto insurance frequently.
However, there is a substantial chunk of the population who, if they don’t actually switch insurance companies every year, do at least shop around every year. It’s a behavior which is more common among younger drivers (under age 35). It’s also something which has become more common over the past few years, after the recession hit in 2008…if you look at any personal-finance web site or blog, they’ll have a list of “easy ways to save money on your household budget”, and every single one of those lists will feature “shop around for your auto insurance”.
Because of that, yes, there is, indeed, fierce competition to gain the business of those “switchers”, as well as to keep one’s own customers from switching, which is exactly why there is so much advertising.
In addition, the ads which carriers like Geico, Progressive, and Esurance have run over the past decade have touted “shopping is easy, switching is easy”. That message has apparently sunk in for many consumers, especially younger ones, who are more willing to shop for auto insurance online. (Yes, it’s far easier to shop, and switch, for auto insurance than it is for homeowners insurance, but they focus on auto.)
(I used to have a major insurance company as a client; I know way too much about the topic. :D)
The milk processors still run a ton of ads, you may just not be seeing the places where they run them any more. They do run some TV ads, but a lot of their focus is now in print ads and online.
And, yes, the purpose of milk ads is to encourage people to drink milk instead of all the other beverage choices out there.
(Yes, I had the milk processors as a client at one point, too. 
)
I think that they are mooching for customers because of both the damned websites touting the evils of milk drinking, and the vegan push where animal products of all kinds are evil and to drink soy milk … as for myself, I am a touch lactose intolerant but I happen to like dairy products, and think soy milk tastes like ass, and I would drink almond milk but I have never been able to find it uncontaminated with sugar [i am diabetic]
That’s a part of it, though both of those sorts of sites (and opinions) are still a little fringe-y (and the milk processors had been running advertising long before those web sites came to be).
A lot of it is competition from carbonated soft drinks (a fight they’ve been fighting for decades), as well as bottled water, coffees, and “new age” beverages (many of which make health claims, which has traditionally been milk’s point of difference).
I watch a fair amount of late night TV and they tend to show commercials featuring websites that end in numbers, the most common being:
Education Connection
Which, judging by the dancing girl in her nightie (yay!), is supposed to hook you up with the college of your choice somehow. But the bizarre thing about this ad is that the website isn’t www.educationconnection.com, it’s something like:
www.findaschool4137.com or www.schoolfinder.47.com or some site with a number at the end.
It’s so obviously scammy that I wonder who would even go to these sites, then I realized the timing of the ads coincide with the “drunk and likely broke” demographic, so perhaps it makes sense.
These commercials (perhaps not coincidentally) seem to run at the same time as those Finally Fast spots.
So perhaps it works this way: Go to www.schoolnow69.com, get infected, then go to www.FinallyFast.com to get your PC fixed.
It’s a win-win!
(Click links at your own risk.)
I don’t watch much TV but there was one jingle that I seemed to hear quite often when I was in the vicinity.
Sure enough, it was a penny auction website.