Why do some television networks sell advertising to their competitors? Isn’t this a little like placing Pepsi ads on cans of Coke? If channel A airs commercials promoting channel B or video-on-demand service C, and those ads are effective, then doesn’t the audience for channel A decrease along with the value of their advertising time slots?
Can you give us some real life examples? A lot of channels are owned by the same parent company (like Viacom) so they’re really cross promoting stuff for the same owners.
A good example is Comcast airing ads for Direct TV. I think those ads come from the networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. and Comcast is just contractually obligated to air them. This isn’t my area of expertise though.
As for other examples, you have cases like A&E Networks which owns A&E, History, Lifetime, and several other channels, so advertising their shows on different channels is still advertising for their own business.
Comcast doesn’t sell ads. Their content providers do. In theory, FCC rules, net neutrality etc. mean the carrier can’t limit the content.
But wait till next week…
A few examples that come to mind immediately are HBO ads I’ve seen on TV and heard on the radio. Hulu advertises on the Big 4 but it is a joint venture that includes some of them.
I guess the point is that eyeballs are eyeballs, and if they leave your domain for another, even if it’s a business partner, that reduces viewership for the particular channel and ultimately reduces the time slot value.
Comcast does, in fact, sell ad space, though what they’re usually doing is selling ad space to local advertisers (i.e., local car dealers, local restaurants, etc.) If you’re watching cable TV, and watching a “cable-only” network (e.g., ESPN, CNN, etc.), and you see an ad for a local business, that ad was undoubtedly placed there by your cable provider.
What they do is pre-empt whatever ad is running on that cable channel, and run the local ad, instead.
If you’re seeing a DirecTV ad while watching cable TV on Comcast, you are almost undoubtedly seeing an ad that DirecTV placed on a broadcast or cable channel, not an ad that DirecTV directly bought the ad space for from Comcast.
In the past, you’d never see, for example, an ABC ad running on NBC. But, now, as things blur, we are seeing some things like HBO ads running on broadcast channels.
This reminds me of an increasingly-important phenomenon about present-day capitalism [pdf paper] that was linked in a recent thread. The largest stockholders of NBC (Comcast) and ABC (Disney) are generally the very same investment groups. To some extent this means these firms have an increased incentive to cooperate and less incentive to compete.
Does the FCC even have any control over cable? I thought FCC was only for terrestrial airwaves?
I think with cable TV, they sell ads locally in the different markets which is how they insert a local car commercial while another part of the country is watching a local home remodeling ad.
The funniest ones are the ones that John Oliver is placing on Fox, during their Fox & Friends hour.
I’m not 100% sure that’s the case, although the local provider may be involved. Some channels sell their own local ad overrides. But…
…this.
The FCC benignly ignores cable except in a few technical areas. However, an anti-net neutrality, pro-provider head as we now have can completely undermine the remnants of fairness and neutrality. And has as much as said he intends to. So when your Comcast connection blocks streaming sites and chooses your search provider for you, don’t say you weren’t warned.
At some point Nickelodeon allowed both Disney Channel and Cartoon Network to air ads on their own channel which was mind-blowing to me and my friends when we were kids as we thought they were all mortal enemies (since they’re all owned by different groups, Viacom, Disney and Turner Broadcasting respectively) for competing in the crowded pre-teen market.
Disney especially since they always seem to be more more high-brow than the much more juvenile Nick.