Fast Forward Commercials

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 02: 03 PM

Last night, thanks to our DVR, Rebecca and I caught up on Fox's 24 by watching the first five episodes in a row. As we were fast forwarding through one of the commercial breaks, with bits and flashes of products flying past, an idea dawned on me: Why not design commmercials to have greater meaning while being fast forwarded through? ...read more

With the growing number of DVRs (Tivo leading the pack) out there, more and more people are fast fowarding through commercials while watching their favorite shows. This has been a challenge for television studios and advertisers alike, who see the fast forward button as a commercial killer.

But what if they took a negative and found a way to squeeze something, anything, positive out of it? What if ad firms took a standard 30 second commercial and story boarded it to have greater meaning when fast forwarded without sound?

Two things immediately jump out as possibilities - using bold text and bold logo usage...both with longer air time during the commercial. The bold visual would ensure the person fast forwarding sees it, while the longer air time ensures the text or logo isn't just a flicker on the screen. It's like condensing a 30 second commercial to a 5-10 second one, where one message and the logo are key. The key is also giving this commercial meaning in 30 second format. Somewhere in the middle is the balance.

Initially this may only make sense on those top 5 or 10 shows that Tivo knows is being recorded. People are most likely fast fowarding through commercials on these. Eventually, this could be a concept that trickles through the commercial medium as a whole...who knows, maybe it already has...and I'm just late to the party. (Of course this doesn't factor in Tivo messing around with advertising during fast forwarding.)

You can proceed to trash my idea in the comments below...

Comments (6)

Comments by Greg:

I believe you are referring to blipverts.

Comments by geniass:

I went to a prezo recently given by both the software and hardware design leads at TiVo.

Two trends they suggested that result from the ad-FF function:

1. More product placement in shows
2. Doing something really memorable right at the beginning (the part everybody will see before they hit FF)

Another thing they could do is actually make ads useful -- I think one of the hardware stores did their ads as useful "Why didn't I think of that" handy tips around the house.

I hope this leads to less schlock, more value.

Comments by Rob:

Greg - I was thinking about blipverts too.

This could be a great time for ad companies to get creative.
1) Split the ad. 3/4 of screen for normal ad, and then in a corner have a FF version that is just a logo or something to catch your attention to make you want to watch the full ad. Like the 3/4 part being the end of a story while the 1/4 the start.
2) Advertisers could say "an extra minute of your program brought to you by ____" and have a border around the screen advertising their product. Some beer company did this a long time ago for World Cup Soccer, since it was live and they couldn't cut away (or if they did there would be a lot of upset fans)

Unfortunately, instead of getting better and more creative, I think the trend will be more lame plain comercials.

Comments by Sammy:

That would probably drive more people to use the 30 second skip feature available on most DVRs (including TiVo). Since most commercials are 30 seconds long you just zip right by them.

Comments by ad7am:

This exact idea has been done. It was on a Shots reel (shots.net) a couple years ago, but I'm not sure exactly when.

Comments by Jim:

Last night I recorded Fox's 24 on my motorola dual tuner
dvr that I rent from comcast for 9.95 a month.
I'm afraid that the tv people have found a solution
for ff through the commercials. The ff, pause, and rewind were disabled when I played it back.
All the other stuff on my dvr works OK. It's only
the 24 program that I can't ff.
Have you heard anything about this?
Any thoughts on this?

Jim

Archives.