I've written all along that online video needs more ads. I've also written repeatedly that the crying over convergence measurement has never made any sense to me. I wrote that again today.
But Turner research chief Jack Wakshlag schooled me in the comments of that post:
Looks to me like we are in violent agreement. The TV Everywhere measurement plan assumes the same ads and ad load for c3 measurement. We will have the same ads online for 3 days. We will swap them out after the c3 period is over. So thanks for confirming the wisdom of the plan.
Ah, now I get it!
Now, that is news to me. Maybe it's because Variety, Broadcasting & Cable, Media Week etc. never pointed that out - or that they pointed it out and I missed it. I'm going with the former, though the latter is certainly possible.
Ether way, that is very big news. Effectively it means, at least for the first three days, that online streaming is ultimately going with a lot more commercials. Currently programs that have a one hour duration with commercials on TV have far fewer commercials online. Typically, for the one hour duration shows that have about 32 national thirty second commercial spots on TV, have roughly five commercial spots online. So, in the TV Everywhere measurement plan, commercial load online would increase by more than 500 percent.
That's a pretty huge increase and a pretty big story. But Jack is right, to the degree that the plan assumes the same ad load for C3 measurement, we are indeed in violent agreement. And I do see the wisdom of that plan, and I am happy to be schooled.
Edit: I know some will say "sure, if they can convince the advertisers to advertise online", but with good measurement, I'm not sure why it would be difficult to get the advertisers to participate. Unlike TV, if you're watching online you can't change the channel, and though you can hit mute and do something else for 30 seconds online, potentially it's harder to avoid ads online than it is with a DVR.
I don’t think its a bad idea. If you can allot an hour to watch it live why not allot the same full hour to watch it online. They should also make it so you can’t fast forward through the commercials. Personally I think this is the only way online viewing will ever get to the point where its counted as much as live viewing. As with live TV people are still free to go get a sandwich during a commercial.
If a commercial means I get to keep watching the show for free then by all means add them.
@chrisjozo
I agree with you. I have no problem with having the same commercials online as they have during broadcast, as long as the viewing is free. If they begin charging me to view online I probably will no longer do so. The ironic thing is that I’m much more likely to watch a 30 second spot than I am a two or three minute block. During broadcast viewing I read or surf the net during commercial breaks.
@ljo
Yeah I don’t think anyone ever really watches the commercial to be honest. I surf the net, do chores or grab a snack during commercials for broadcast viewing.
Most of what I read from TV executives in a public forum has me shaking my head, most of what I read from Jack Wakshlag has me nodding my head.
There is an interesting discontinuity there.
It seems like you’re arguing that apples are red and he’s arguing that oranges are orange.
It’s nice to know that that’s what they want to do, but I don’t know that they will be able to implement that. It’s certainly not what is going on right now, and the fact that it isn’t is not Nielsen’s fault, which still calls into question the point of the coalition of the whiners.
Julia, though the coalition itself still strikes me as group therapy and a way to pressure Nielsen, it seems like it worked.
It’s not Nielsen’s fault that they aren’t more commercials online, but if the goal is to sell C3 across TV and online with the same commercial load, the lack of convergence metrics is definitely an impediment to that goal.
Taking the existing TV metrics and then trying to combine them with network provided online results to achieve something similar would be a nightmare for the advertisers.
Forcing viewers to watch more ads will not help television transition to the digital age. The cat is out of the bag, and people will not simply accept constant interruptions when they find out there are ready alternatives. Peer to peer file sharing will tear apart any scheme the networks come up with, no matter how aggressively they fight it. I keep reading articles like this to see if anybody is waking up over there, but I just see more of the same doomed flailing.
The only escape I see is more product placement within shows, embedded in the scripts. Or possibly, very short ads included with high quality digital releases directly from networks onto the file sharing networks.
Viewers will seek a balance between what is easy and what is least annoying. Dumping 32 ads into every show is certainly not going to be acceptable to anybody who knows somewhere else they can find the same content.
The networks probably aren’t fearful of peer-to-peer networks having a big impact now, or (my guess) for the foreseeable future. My opinion is that most people would trade off convenience for commercials without resorting to worrying about finding and waiting for the files to download. For many, perhaps most, perhaps most by a wide margin, having to search out and download the torrents would be the bigger annoyance than waiting for the commercials. I get that it isn’t for you (and for a lot of people), but I think for now, especially in the US, that’s still a rounding error. Time will surely tell!
EPIC FAIL.
I watch shows online to avoid the endless parade of commercials, and I’m definitely not the only one who does this.
The only effect I see this move having is there will be a lot more torrenting in the future.
P2P isn’t the problem. These hosting sites like, megaupload, hotfile, and others, let you upload large files, that can be downloaded at full speed. That’s what happened to music also, because torrent took off, but not like those sites did. I still remember hundreds of people on a forum posting, yousendit(site is gone now, I think) links to every new album.
Those sites have come along way and you can upload 900mb files on a lot of them now, without any download limit.
I’ll watch a show that I like on Hulu, because I want them to get the advertising money. Most people can deal with ads, but I don’t think they can deal with too many.
Most people can deal with ads, but I don’t think they can deal with too many.
That is clearly not the case in general, at least not yet, as most people, even teens and twenty-somethings still watch TV on a television.
That said, when it comes to sharing content with your friends, sites like hotfile, etc., are less complex. But they still involve someone getting the content into digital format without commercials or downloading the torrent before sharing it. I don’t buy the music comparison mostly because of the file size and general ease of getting content into a digital format (and nobody had to edit any commercials out). But again, we’ll see!
I keep seeing people mention that P2P torrents will be the main alternative to online streaming and watching live. As Robert points out, most people do not know how to find the torrents, are willing to deal with the time it takes to download them, figuring out how to get them to play properly, and deal with sometimes sub par video quality. Not to mention getting bogus files from time to time, hooking up a PC to the TV, or burning to DVD just to watch a 1 hour program. Then you also have the legal aspects to contend with, is it really worth the risk of getting into legal trouble over pirating 30 minutes to an hour of entertainment? Yes there is a market for P2P, but it’s a small niche market at best.
Online streaming will one day render the DVR obsolete, and live viewing a thing of the past. The Networks will have no other choice but to place the same number of ads, if not more ads into a streamed program to support themselves. In all honesty I can see a future where some TV shows are only available via ad supported online streaming, giving the networks the ability to provide more content than ever before.
People want the convenience to watch tv when they want to watch it. Ad supported online streaming is the only model I see working. People have already shown that they are willing to deal with commercials in exchange for free viewing, now the networks need to band together and create an industry standard for the format in which they use to deliver advertisements while still giving the viewer what they want, which is watching shows when they want to watch them.
Right now we should be glad they are only talking about including the same number of national ads in online streams that they have in live TV now. They could very well say they want to double the # of ads for streaming video considering they will no longer be chained to the limitations of run time like they have with live tv now.
Interesting. First even on Live TV I do not watch ads very often, Ad comes on and I switch to a news/weather feed.
When I watch from the computer recorded content, I skip through the commercials 30 seconds at a time. At one point I used to have the computer automatically rip out all the commercials but after a year or more of that I just leave them in and skip through them.
When I watch internet streamed content (which I am doing much more often) if it is a 15 second commercial I watch it, If it is a 30 second commercial I may switch to news or I may watch it, if it is one of those stream sites with multiple commercials than I stop using that site unless I cannot find the content anywhere else. I rare P2P and download shows.
The real issue is that the streaming internet content is not designed for a computer media center but rater for a computer. I watch this on a tv hooked to the computer and really want to be able use the remote for the computer but so far I have not found any site with decent graphics for using on the TV with the computer remote.
Again I believe that advertising needs to be integrated into programming for the long haul. No matter what you do it is virtually impossible to stop streaming content from being captured, the commercials ripped out and then that content rebroadcast without commercials.
Think of shows like That 70′s Show or 3rd rock from the sun that had video transitions from on scene to another. These could be turned into 10 second advertisements that fit into the show. People would watch.
I am very much toying with the idea of cutting off my cable feed in order to force myself to try and get used to on-line streaming as my primary method of obtaining content.
“They could very well say they want to double the # of ads for streaming video considering they will no longer be chained to the limitations of run time like they have with live tv now.”
That’s a really good point.
And about the torrenting thing, I agree that it’s very uncommon. The majority of my friends don’t even know what torrenting is, and are very confused by the concept. Plus, finding all the codecs you need and figuring out which files to download can be frustrating if you are unfamiliar with it. The casual internet user just isn’t going to have the patience to figure something like that out.
Then again, ten years ago, people were probably saying the same thing about downloading music…
The thing about torrents is not for the 30+ crowd but for the the younger people. I am in my 50′s and worked in the software technology field for most of my career.
Most people do not want to be bothered with P2P but it is the future generations that you need to be concerned with.
The number of times that I have had to go over and clean out friends computers from the effects of their children and grandchildren downloading p2p stuff on their computers is becoming more frequent.
8-12 year old’s are completely able to download stuff from P2P sites like limewire and have no concept of the fact that they may be load a virus on the family computer. And if they don’t know about it then their friends do when they come over to visit.
These are the future audience of TV advertisers and they are currently much more familiar with P2P than any of their parents/grand parents. They also are spoiled and want what they want now and this extends into TV content, video games etc. Advertising really needs to morph into something that lets them have on-demand content and has the ability to advertise effectively to them.
I’m the broadcasters worst nightmare. I basically don’t watch live TV any more. I DVR all my regularly scheduled programming. I even DVR sporting events. If I do watch live, it’s in “channel surfing” mode. As soon as a commercial comes on, I’m switching to something else. People like me are currently a minority, but we’re growing. Once you make the transition, it’s impossible to go back. I don’t know anybody with a DVR who would voluntarily give it up. You can take mine when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. I don’t think the broadcasters will ever be able to put the genie back in the bottle.
The CIMM movement does make far more sense if it is assumed the same commercials are running on all “platforms”. Increasing the number of internet commercials will also help make online ad viewing account for anything more than a rounding error.
And again, increasing the number of ads isn’t likely to diminish the amount of online viewing by most consumers – the most frequent reason given for viewing shows online is “Missed the broadcast airing”. If they were willing to see the broadcast ads, they will be willing to see the online ads.
Now, the larger question of how the TV model survives in the long run is still an unavoidable issue, even if the general outlines are already clear – more emulation of the cable model, whether by actual conversion to cable channels (or forced carriage fees), cheaper programming, and increased product placement.
Like John and others, I DVR everything and never watch commercials. It enables me to watch three “one hour” programs in two hours. Until there is an online equivalent for skipping commercials, I won’t watch any online programming that shares the commercial “load” that we see on television.
This approach wouldn’t be necessary if broadcasters (and, not doubt, the entire broadcast food chain) hadn’t become so greedy. Once upon a time (this no fairy tale!), back in the ’70s/’80s, a one-hour program featured 50 minutes or more of programming and about 10 minutes of commercials. Queue up a DVD of your favorite old show and clock it for yourself. (Many of use who remember those days are still in the coveted 18-49 demo, but are old enough to be really grouchy and demanding!) Now an hour-long broadcast includes, what, about 42 minutes of actual programming? And often, in one corner of the screen, they’ll have pasted an ad for another program that stays onscreen the entire time, and/or have programming ads “pop up” at incredibly inopportune moments. How disrespectful to the programs themselves, and to the people who watch them. And often, particularly in the second half of a program, you’ll see intervals during which they offer only five minutes or so of programming sandwiched between two four-minute bundles of ads. No thanks! As long as I can use my DVR, I feel like I get the last laugh. :^)
I hear you Sam! I do not own a DVR, and I stopped watching Cable Television three years ago. The sheer number of Commercials, along with what’s being advertised on these Commercials IMO has rendered TV UNWATCHABLE. Running an ad for your product 2-3 times each break WILL NOT increase my interest in purchasing it, most likely it will TURN ME AWAY. Also there are some ads that are aimed at the wrong audience, it was the sight of an ad for an “Adult Product” run during a Children’s Show that made me cancel my Cable Subscription. So what did I do with the money that was formerly used to pay my subscription? Quitw simple, if a program is not on DVD I simply do not watch it!