Online TV with more ads

[disneysteve]

Has anyone else noticed that online TV is now filled with as many ads as broadcast? I watch NCIS on CBS.com. There used to be one, maybe two brief ads at each break. Now, there are 4 full commercials. It's really annoying, though I certainly understand why they do it. I always wondered how they were making any money the old way. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.

[JoeP]

Has anyone else noticed that online TV is now filled with as many ads as broadcast? I watch NCIS on CBS.com. There used to be one, maybe two brief ads at each break. Now, there are 4 full commercials. It's really annoying, though I certainly understand why they do it. I always wondered how they were making any money the old way. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.

I am immune to commercials: I do my own research, on my own terms, on my own time, and make decision based upon data. I can say with 100% certainty that I will not, under any circumstances, buy a product at the suggestion of an advertisement.

Having said that, shows I watch and web pages I visit are wasting their effort showing *me* advertisements. Sure, they can go ahead and show them to everyone else, and that may result in some sales, but they will get no money from me. Because advertisements serve me no purpose, I have no moral objection to blocking them; I will not be influenced, let alone click on them.

You may want to try Adblock Plus on Firefox. They are constantly updating it to block even streaming advertisements. For example, we get zero advertisements on Pandora and Hulu, thanks to Adblock Plus. Maybe it will work on cbs.

[siggy_freud]

Has anyone else noticed that online TV is now filled with as many ads as broadcast? I watch NCIS on CBS.com. There used to be one, maybe two brief ads at each break. Now, there are 4 full commercials. It's really annoying, though I certainly understand why they do it. I always wondered how they were making any money the old way. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.

I think for a long time, traditional TV was still subsidizing the online watchers, and we benefited from having little/no ads. Now that people are moving away from traditional TV at an accelerated rate, they've acknowledged the market-shift and are changing ad tactics accordingly.

[thesimplemoneyblog]

It was nice while it lasted. The problem is that advertising revenue is how so many people/products/sites make their money, that they have to keep coming up with creative and new ways to keep it in front of us. Since we are shifting more to online viewing habits, traditional TV ad revenue sources are obviously declining, and the companies try to compensate for the changes by having to introduce more commercials online.

[SeanH]

I don't know if this is still possible, but the "trick" back in the day was to "watch" all the advertisements up front while doing something else with mute on and then watch the show all the way through. Essentially - the advertisements were spaced at certain points that were marked and if you attempted to jump ahead or watched up to a certain point you'd be able to see the ad. Once you'd done this then you'd have the control to watch the show on your own terms. All that aside - I don't think there was ever a golden age. Online ads have always in my opinion been as frequent - they were just shorter.

[bUU]

Everybody's gotta pay da bills.

[thesimplemoneyblog]

I am immune to commercials: I do my own research, on my own terms, on my own time, and make decision based upon data. I can say with 100% certainty that I will not, under any circumstances, buy a product at the suggestion of an advertisement.

Having said that, shows I watch and web pages I visit are wasting their effort showing *me* advertisements. Sure, they can go ahead and show them to everyone else, and that may result in some sales, but they will get no money from me. Because advertisements serve me no purpose, I have no moral objection to blocking them; I will not be influenced, let alone click on them.

You may want to try Adblock Plus on Firefox. They are constantly updating it to block even streaming advertisements. For example, we get zero advertisements on Pandora and Hulu, thanks to Adblock Plus. Maybe it will work on cbs.

While I understand what you are saying in that you are "immune" to advertising, that's not true. If you didn't at least notice advertisements (billboards, online commercials, tv commercials, radio ads, subway ad placements, placement in stores) you wouldn't ever know what's even out there to purchase, so you wouldn't know what to research. How can you search for cheap phones if you have never heard about the types of phones available? You certainly don't get all of your information and perceptions from word-of-mouth from friends and family. Whether or not you think you gain value from them in the moment and then go right then and purchase the item is a different story, but that doesn't mean you're immune to commercials and advertisements.

[disneysteve]

I am immune to commercials: I do my own research, on my own terms, on my own time, and make decision based upon data. I can say with 100% certainty that I will not, under any circumstances, buy a product at the suggestion of an advertisement.

While I understand what you are saying in that you are "immune" to advertising, that's not true. If you didn't at least notice advertisements (billboards, online commercials, tv commercials, radio ads, subway ad placements, placement in stores) you wouldn't ever know what's even out there to purchase, so you wouldn't know what to research.

True. Also, I'm not saying that I'm influenced by the commercials. I don't think I am in the least. I'm not a very good American consumer. I don't go out and constantly buy crap I don't need. I mostly stick to the same basic products I've been buying for years. I buy a lot of store brand items. You won't find a single designer label in my closet.

Whether I am influenced by ads or not, however, I am stuck sitting through them. I pay no attention. When I'm watching on the computer, I'll typically click to another window while the ad runs in the background and click back when the show resumes. Sometimes, I'll mute the volume during the ad and turn it back on for the show. It was just nice when there were very few, very short ads which have now been replaced by more and longer ads.

[disneysteve]

The most annoying part of the ads is that they repeat the same ones over and over and over again. Watch one episode of NCIS and I see the same commercials 6 times each. At least on broadcast TV, the ads are usually different at each ad break.

[JoeP]

While I understand what you are saying in that you are "immune" to advertising, that's not true. If you didn't at least notice advertisements (billboards, online commercials, tv commercials, radio ads, subway ad placements, placement in stores) you wouldn't ever know what's even out there to purchase, so you wouldn't know what to research. How can you search for cheap phones if you have never heard about the types of phones available? You certainly don't get all of your information and perceptions from word-of-mouth from friends and family. Whether or not you think you gain value from them in the moment and then go right then and purchase the item is a different story, but that doesn't mean you're immune to commercials and advertisements.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I know myself better than you know me, and I can say with full confidence that advertisements do not influence me in the slightest. I take that back, the annoying ones (e.g., personal injury, used car guys yelling at me, beer) influence me to NOT give any of these businesses my money.

Since you asked, I know what is "out there" by searching online, by word of mouth, and by browsing some stores. This is driven by actual need, which is the opposite of being pressured to consider offerings from an advertisement I didn't agree to see or hear. It involves actual research, as opposed to blindly favoring a single or group of offerings.

Like disneysteve, I am not a very good American consumer. But just because I ignore all commercials does not mean that I do not consume; I simply consume exactly what I want when I want it...or in other words, consume on MY terms.

[bUU]

In most ways that matter, it doesn't matter whether any one consumer is affected by consumer advertising or not. Both market choices and critical elements of "need" are shaped by those who are so affected, and with only minor exception the impact of avoiding such influence is nil.

The consumer marketplace can be thought of as similar to the equity marketplace in some ways, where its own form of the efficient-market hypothesis in play. I heard about this first back in 2000, at a conference where Kjell A. Nordström spoke. Opting out of commercial advertising simply puts us in the back seat of the car, with those who do watch and are influenced by commercial advertising driving the car, crafting the choices we all have to choose from in the marketplace, and to a great extent determining through their selections which are going to be the best choices.

The idea that people who watch and are influenced by commercials don't evaluate "need", don't research benefits and risks, etc. - is nonsense. People who watch commercials and are influenced by them also do those things, as well as make choices between equally qualified suppliers based on the advertising.

A) That, in turn, affects brand selection by those not influenced by commercials, because those that promote their products better receive superior rewards from the marketplace, thereby strengthening their financial position, making them better able to provide superior products and services while still affording their owners superior returns. Effectively, the quality of the promotion tracks (not perfectly, but to a great extent) the quality of the selection.

B) That also affects what everyone purchases in many cases since new and innovative products become integrated into a standard expectation that's shared socially, not just through commercial advertising or other forms of projection. Again, insulating one's self from commercial advertising simply hands over to others the control over that portion of the system by which the consumer marketplace operates, rather than eliminating the impact of consumer advertising on those folks. The impact still occurs, just second-hand.

I mentioned, though, that there are exceptions. Absolutely. They involve not only insulating ourselves from commercial advertising but also from society in appreciable ways. I recall very fondly visiting my grandmother's home. It was like walking back into the late 1950s or early 1960s. I don't think she ever had a coffee-maker in the house, never cooked on a non-stick pan, never progressed past reel-to-reel tape, etc. The only anomaly was the wall-mounted telephone that the telephone company forced her to accept when they finally turned off support for rotary dial.

This is a very valid way to live, and as we get older we'll have that choice, to either stay current with the times or at least in some ways (very few of us as completely as my grandmother, I'm sure) remaining stuck in the past. It is less stressful in some ways, though more stressful in others, such as when the penchant for the old crashes up against an outside world that has moved on (such as with my grandmother's telephone). It also is, of course, more cost-efficient. If life is all about spending less money, it's absolutely the way to go.

My mother was a counter example. She embraced life, and change, and progress. She still have token reminders of her past around her when she passed away, but she had a cell phone (smartphones were just coming out back then), she loved interacting with her grandchildren through email, and her husband watched the football game on a big-screen HDTV. I'm sure it cost my mother a bit more to engage society in these ways, but, comparing her last years with that of my grandmother, I cannot say that my mother's choice was in any way deficient.

[disneysteve]

In most ways that matter, it doesn't matter whether any one consumer is affected by consumer advertising or not. Both market choices and critical elements of "need" are shaped by those who are so affected, and with only minor exception the impact of avoiding such influence is nil.

Excellent post!

It is very true that we are all affected by advertising and marketing, either directly or indirectly, because it is that advertising and marketing that determines what products succeed and what products fail. That marketing cycle advances whether you go with it willingly or kicking and screaming. I could give examples of both ends of that spectrum from my own personal life, times when I've sought out the hot new product (like my new iPhone 5) and times when I've been very content to stick with the tried and true old product (we still have a VCR and it's been used as recently as last week) and we still have a couple of normal size tube TVs in the house, not colossal HD flat screens).

The problem, if you want to call it that, is that sticking with the old stuff sometimes becomes impossible because everyone else moves on, at least in part due to advetising and marketing. When our family room TV died a year or so ago, we had no choice but to buy a flat screen. That's all there is today. I actually had some difficulty locating one because we didn't want or need a 48" or 62" or whatever ridiculous size they sell now. I needed something that would fit in our wall unit where our 25" tube TV had been. I found one but certainly didn't have much of a selection from which to choose.

I've also found that newer cars often have features that I don't like and would never choose to have, but I don't get that choice. That choice has already been made for me by others. I bought a used car in June - a 2006 Camry - and it has several features that I really dislike. I've asked the service department to disable them but there is no way to do so. I find them annoying at best and dangerous at worst but that's apparently what the powers that be have decided we should have.

So yes, we are all influenced and affected by advertising and marketing whether we like it or not.

[JoeP]

Of course we're all affected by advertising, but not all of us directly. I have no doubt that some people will watch commercials and go out and demand certain products. I am simply one who is benefiting from this process without being on the front lines.

[LuckyRobin]

I've noticed a huge jump in commercials since Megaupload was shut down by the government nearly a year ago for criminal copyright infringement. I think the regular network websites were competing with the illegal streaming and downloading that was commercial free so they didn't put too much in. When people no longer had the option of going somewhere else, I think the networks slammed the commercials in as hard and as fast as they could. Not that I'm in anyway endorsing what MU offered, I just noticed the advertising jump coincided with the take down. Was in fact probably planned to do so.

[bUU]

I am simply one who is benefiting from this process without being on the front lines.

I'm confused on a few counts: What front lines? You're "benefiting" from this process - a process which many folks revile (and didn't you do so earlier in the thread) - without having a vote yourself. To be fair, having a vote is overrated, in this case, but while they're really no harm there's also really no benefit to letting others drive your purchasing habits.