< ![CDATA[After all this time we finally get to hear about exactly what has been bothering the US market for years with the growth of the PVR/DVR market, back here in the UK, as reported through multiple sites but primarily the DTG News.
Just as in the US, there will now be a whole heap of discussion about how exactly advertising will change to meet this challenge. However, in the UK this is doubly important because of the growth of Freeview. A large part of Freeview is subsidised via the license fee through the BBC but a sizable chunk of this dynamic market is the commercial space. This commercial space is needed for competitive and viewer satisfaction reasons, so we hope that new paradigms of advertising will be found to ensure it can be paid for.
Over the last two years I have heard of a number of interesting strategies to allow the current model of advertising to continue in at least some form (rather than look to the product placement, show sponsorship or 'let us change all the boxes so we can track everything they watch' approaches).
The best ones I can see are:
1. Ensure that adverts are more entertainment and that they become part of the viewing experience. Now this has been tried for a long time and has been semi-successful but the problem with entertainment is that it does not come in 30 second bursts and should not be so repetitive. Are we looking at the dropping of 30 second adverts and their replacement with the 1 to 2 minute 'Youtube style' advert that sends an entertaining message? Just like the old 'live' ads undertaken in the 1950s/
2. Key info focus adverts so that the advertising messages are shown on key frames that a fast forward or 30 second hop would select and display to the waiting viewer.
3. Place more importance on the 10 second or so programme lead in where the viewer would be stopping the fast forward and would be more intently noting what is on screen because they do not want to miss the programme. In fact this is essentially already being done with the sponsorship section, as seen on popular American series on C5 in the UK but that is too repetitive to be of interest to viewers however – it would need to be more entertaining and episodic.
4. Cut the advert breaks to single 30 second chunks of one product so the customer has no chance to fast forward/hop as the programme restarts again almost immediately.
Somehow however, I think that some aspects of these may raise some eyebrows in the advertising standards/OFCOM arenas but I think that there needs to be something done otherwise the 'Free' TV platforms will disappear to be replaced only the Pay platforms, and their focus on driving ARPU ever higher.
Well those are my thoughts, and I wonder if any of these will come to pass?]]>
