I was watching a TV show, and it went to commerical. There was a brief snippet of a woman saying, “I can’t get up”, which quickly disappeared and was followed by a full-length commercial. Obviously something went wrong with the first ad, but what? This got me to thinking about the commercial-airing process. How exactly does this work? For instance, if a local commercial is due to air, who or what mechanism insures that I see one for my area here in southwest Virginia, and not in say, Sacramento? So, in general, how does the programming of commercials function?
What you very likely saw was your local cable provider dropping in an ad “on top of” the ad which was running on the network. They often aren’t too good at timing the activation of that locally-sourced ad, and so, you see the first moment of the ad which is being “cut in on”. IME (I used to work in advertising), cable companies don’t do that too often on the “over-the-air” networks (e.g., NBC, Fox, etc.), but they do it quite frequently on the cable-only networks (e.g., ESPN, CNN, etc.).
How ads are bought, in general (very short version):
An advertiser can buy ads in a couple of different ways:
-
A “national buy” runs on the national network feed for the network / show on which the ad is placed. If I, as an advertiser, buy a spot to run on CBS’s “Big Bang Theory”, it’ll be seen everywhere that that show is run that evening. A national buy is fairly cost-efficient if your market is all (or most) of the country (as far as a cost-per-person-watching), but can be very expensive in the absolute, especially if you’re on one of the major networks. Ads on cable networks (particularly the smaller cable networks) are considerably less expensive to run.
-
A “spot buy” or “local buy” runs only in the specific markets in which you place the ads. If you run a business which only operates in a specific market (or in only some markets), you’re only going to want to run your ads in those markets.
- You can make “spot buys” during the network programming slots (prime time, late night, morning news/talk shows such as “Today”, weekend sports) on major networks; the networks’ local affiliates get several “station breaks” during each hour (typically at or around the bottom and top of the hour), in which they can run their own ads – this is where you’ll see ads for local businesses, as well as promos for the stations’ newscasts.
- You can also make “spot buys” on a network affiliate station, but during their “local” programming (i.e., programming which the station itself airs, rather than delivering the network feed). This would include the local news, syndicated programming (such as “early fringe”, the half-hour spot in between the early local news and prime time), late-late night, daytime, etc.
- Finally, you can make “spot buys” on cable networks by contracting with the local cable companies. This is that “cut-in” that you saw. Frequently, cable companies can be very targeted with those drop-ins (even focusing on single ZIP codes), and it can be a very cost-efficient way to do TV ads. These ads are often for extremely local businesses (local “mom and pop” restaurants, car dealers, etc.)
Thanks for that wealth of info, kenobi 65. It was interesting and informative. But I must now somewhat sheepishly say, what I’m really interested in is the mechanical process of dropping one ad on top of another. Is there a guy somewhere in a booth who hits a switch just as the offending commercial is coming on, so that the correct one runs?* And in general, when a show goes to commercial, what controls when the first commercial runs, and then the second, etc, until the TV show resumes?
*I don’t really imagine this is what happens, btw. It’s just that I have no idea what happens.
As I understand it, the act of “switching on” an ad is mostly, if not entirely, computerized these days.
Media buyers (the advertising specialists who work in buying ad time and placing ads for their clients) may try to lobby for particular spots within a “pod” (the series of ads which comprise a commercial break), but it’s ultimately up to the traffic department at the network / station to make the final placements.
As a rule, they do try to avoid placing multiple ads within the same category during a pod (so you’re unlikely to see both a McDonalds and a Burger King ad in the same commercial break), but at certain times of year, with certain types of ads, it’s hard for them to avoid it (because so many of the ad spots have been bought by the same type of advertiser). So, in the next few months, you may well see commercial breaks consisting of nothing but political ads; after Thanksgiving, you’ll likely see multiple retailer (Christmas shopping) ads in the same pod.
I see. I think it is obvious that these pods must be created ahead of time, correct? So in my example, how did that ad snippet appear?
A long time ago when I used to work at a TV station, the control room guys would have a bunch of ads queued up, ready for the commercial break. If they pressed the wrong button, and the wrong add started to play, then they could press the button for the next ad. You would see a tiny bit of the first ad, before the correct one started. I don’t know how it works now, but that’s how it would have happened in the early 90s.
Entirely, and programmed in advance.
Probably a mistake, a glitch, a boo-boo. Computers aren’t prefrect, y’know?
I speak as a program director for a tiny cable station. I can set up the shows & announcements for months in advance by day and time and don’t even have to visit the studio, as I have total control over the Internet. I can create an ad or a show and upload it from home. But sometimes shit happens.
Yes, they’re created ahead of time. The network traffic department will have set something like:
1510 {3:10pm} break:
- Ford Focus ad #xxxxx (all ads will have some sort of unique identifier; the advertiser generally will want a specific ad run)
- Bud Light ad #xxxxx
- Paramount movie ad #xxxxx
- etc.
Your local cable company will also have planned in (roughly) when they’re going to drop in specific ads (though they may not know exactly when the ad break will happen, and almost undoubtedly won’t know which ads the network is running during that break). The reason you saw a “snippet” (probably) was that the cable network was running an ad during that particular time slot, and the cable company’s “drop-in” ad didn’t start until a moment after the network’s ad did.
So, the “I can’t get up” ad which you saw was running on the network feed; the ad which then began a moment later was being placed by your cable company, just in your market.
I’ll note that when my cable company (Comcast) does one of these drop-ins, they are terrible at it. Frequently, you see 2-3 seconds of the ad which they’re pre-empting, before their ad starts (and, 90% of the time, it’s an ad for Comcast itself).
Okay, it seems there was indeed a man in a booth at one time, and if I’m reading other responses correctly, there still is. In retrospect, I don’t see how it could have been any other way! Thanks all.
I, for one, welcome our new musically inclined feline overlords.
From the standpoint of, “at some level, a human being makes a determination on what gets played during a commercial break, and in what order”, yes.
The same thing always happened on Dish Network. What is the point of that? I’ve already bought your service. If anything, the new deal that’s better than mine but not available to existing customers will just make me feel worse about my purchase. At the very least, advertise your premium packages or something.
BTW, the computers themselves usually are quite close to perfect. It’s the show or a previous ad that may run a little short, and thus the computer was programmed incorrectly. It’s almost always user error, just like most computer problems.
What are the rules for when the cable company can drop in an ad on top of a national one?
I’ve seen it consistently from some stations and think it’s because their clocks are not properly synchronized. The ad runs automatically at a certain time (no buttons to press) and one station around here is consistently a second or so behind that.
from Kenobi 65:
My older brother was a media buyer. He explained the job to me with this analogy:
The first network airing of Gone with the Wind. Scarlett was out foraging for food and found the Wilkes’s radish patch. She eats a radish and is sick. She swears: “As God is my witness, as God is my witness they’re not going to lick me. I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!” Station cuts to a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial…
Perhaps this is not what you are observing, but there can be a few-second delay between the broadcast data as it leaves the station and the time it arrives at the recipient’s TV. Our station broadcasts both analog and digital, and the digital signal is a few seconds behind the analog.
And our station is synchronized to an Internet time clock several times a day. I imagine all stations are.
Somewhat related question if I may… are there any regulations or conventions such that commercials are generally aired at the same time from channel to channel. As I channel hop it seems that if one channel is airing a commercial others are as well.
And another thing…it seems like I’ve heard radio people, maybe tv people as well, refer to a “hard break”. Does that have anything to do with going to a commercial whether they want to or not (either by reg or convention as mentioned above)?
Cable (and broadcast) networks have “fixed” and “pre-emptible” ads. Fixed ads are contracted to run at a certain time at a set price. Pre-emptible ads are like flying standby – you can get them cheaper, but you may also be moved or dropped.
No regulations, it’s just the custom. Also scripted TV shows have traditionally been produced to run in “acts” to build toward a climax, and the acts usually work out to be the same time, six or seven minutes.
If a show has been recorded, you can edit it to schedule the breaks at whatever point you like. If it’s live (like a talk show), you hold the break until, for example, the caller finishes. However, there are some things like station breaks that absolutely have to happen on schedule, and the master computer will cut away from programming for those “hard breaks” ready or not.
In the early 1960s I went to a taping of “Whom do you Trust” with Johnny Carson. This was a network game show, and they actually ran the ads in the studio during the station breaks. (It was not live, of course.) I remember because Carson made fun of them. When I taped Jeopardy they paused for the breaks, but did not show ads, but that is syndicated. Does anyone know if they still include ads with network or basic cable live on tape shows, or if they put in them later thanks to better technology?