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NFT: Where do you/does society draw the line with advertisements?

Overseer : 9/19/2014 10:50 am
Was thinking about this the other day while I was watching Seinfeld on Pix 11. Frequent commercial breaks are to be expected, but then during the show, an ad for some shitty product pops up and overlaps the bottom 1/3 of the screen. That was it for me and I turned it off.

Lots of justified complaining around here about the endless commercials during football games. And I remember a few years back during a Rangers playoff game...closing minute, Rangers up by 1, opposing goalie pulled, crowd going wild as shot after shot is fired. Announcer is loudly reeling off the play by play: "PUCK CROSSES THE BLUE LINE, NET IS EMPTY, 45 SECONDS LEFT, CAN THEY HOLD ON? - 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance, visit Geico.com today - SHOT SAILS WIDE OF THE GOAL!..." Really?

So my question is...do you have a limit where you'll stop watching or doing something because of ads. Does society at large? Where is the line? For instance there are ads all over buses inside & out, but not so much on Airplanes. Would travelers not stand for ads plastered all over their tray tables or on the plane's ceiling? Will we just put up with it regardless because that's capitalism and we want to consume the product? Or is there a point like me with Seinfeld where you say "okay, I'm done".
An ancillary question  
njm : 9/19/2014 10:53 am : link
Will someone provide an alternative other than the HBO pay model?
For me, it's when the ads interfere with my experience.  
Section331 : 9/19/2014 10:55 am : link
The example you describe fits that mold, as do pop-ups and screen take-overs, they make me less likely to visit those sites.

Display ads don't bother me because they are easy to ignore. I wouldn't care if a restaurant sold their plates to advertisers since it wouldn't Impact how I enjoy the food.
commercials  
big bopper : 9/19/2014 11:01 am : link
It bothers me too. It is annoying as well when the station logo appears on bottom left for an undue length of time or when a pop up tells me what show I'm watching. I think I know what I'm viewing.

They also have pop ups when the credits are rolled. The unions that represent these performers should make it a serious issue !
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GP : 9/19/2014 11:11 am : link
My father always says that cable subscriptions should be free, much like radio, because of the way we're getting hammered with ads. The more the marketing industry innovates and finds new and more creative ways to add marketing to our programming, the more I think he has a point. It's crazy.

One night I got roped into watching 'Private Parts' on Comedy Central. 5 minutes of movie, 7 minutes of commercials. Rinse and repeat about 8 times right in the middle of the movie. It was unfathomably unwatchable at that point.
GP  
Overseer : 9/19/2014 11:16 am : link
I was about to make a post about watching movies on that very channel. Watching a film on Comedy Central is brutal because of the rapid fire commercial breaks.

Contrast that with overseas. I lived in France for a while and I distinctly remember watching 'Outbreak' on a network station and there were 3 or 4 breaks the entire film (and they have soap commercials with topless women, but that's a whole other topic about sexually repressed America...)
....  
BrettNYG10 : 9/19/2014 11:18 am : link
Drives me nuts when one of those ads pops up and blocks game play.
pause button  
Spyder : 9/19/2014 11:20 am : link
on the dvr, has made my line easier to live with.

Yeah, it is tough with live sports, but I deal with it. I don't answer the phone when watching, or go to the net, to remain spoil free.

Almost all the rest of my tv watching these days is dvr-ed or paused for 20 minutes/per hour to ff commercials.
I particularly don't like it when  
Pork and Beans : 9/19/2014 11:20 am : link
I am paying for something, and then still have to watch ads. If I am getting something for free, then I decide each time whether the ad is worth what I am getting.
I hardly ever watch live TV anymore  
Scyber : 9/19/2014 11:23 am : link
Everything is from Netflix or other streaming sources. I do however use Hulu+, while it has ads, they are still shorter then live TV ads.

That said, I was an early adopter of the DVR (first one in 2000) and used it to skip commericals all of the time. My favorite DVR was the ReplayTV which had Commercial Advance Technology which would automatically skip over the commercials for you. No button presses, no FF, just commercial free bliss. Too bad they got sued for that.

Watching ID channel or similar  
mrvax : 9/19/2014 11:31 am : link
I hate the big ID logo plastered in the lower right with the name of the show and upper right has some shit playing tomorrow night. It takes up way too much screen.
Also really hate  
mrvax : 9/19/2014 11:33 am : link
how damn loud commercials are over program audio. I'd guess it averages 20% louder.

Tell me a TV company can't put a audio limiter on the set?
I'm currently having trouble watching  
djl8699 : 9/19/2014 11:45 am : link
the Sunday, Monday and Thursday night games after watching Red Zone each Sunday afternoon. The ads are unbearable, too frequent and very insulting in a lot of ways(that's a discussion for another day). I don't mind the way Hulu does it(1-2 spots every 10 minutes or so), but this thing where watching a full football game means you're watching over an hour and a half of commercials has got to stop.
The answer is that there is no line nor should there b  
Bill L : 9/19/2014 1:10 pm : link
other than the one you yourself already noted...when it becomes too irritating for you to continue watching. On the non-individual level it's when the ads chase away enough consumers to make a negative profit impact.
I was just in Canada  
Go Terps : 9/19/2014 1:36 pm : link
Driving along their highways the lack of billboards was surprisingly pleasant.

But I'll still take billboards over tv interruptions. If my job were to come up with shit for the Geico lizard to say, or some read for an announcer to give DURING the action, I'd jump off a building. Professional interrupters.
its not going away and will likely get worse  
UConn4523 : 9/19/2014 1:40 pm : link
and that's just TV.

Just discussed at work this morning how Facebook can now listen to you if you have FB messenger installed, and if it hears you say certain words, it will advertise a matching product to you.

Something I never heard of (mainly since I'm pretty anti-FB), but I can't believe that's allowed. I know you sign your rights away when agreeing to FB's terms, but I feel like that much be in such fineprint that its borderline illegal.
I can't watch live TV anymore  
jcn56 : 9/19/2014 1:40 pm : link
It's reached the point where I'm starting to DVR games and delay watching. The breaks are just too frequent and too long.

The kickoff sequence to a football game in particular has become ridiculous. Just eliminate the KO and be done with it already.
I'm OK with ads on  
phil in arizona : 9/19/2014 2:14 pm : link
free/cheap things. I don't mind 5-15 second spots on short youtube videos. I think 30+ seconds is pushing it unless it's a long video.

Regular webpages that automatically stream video ads should be shot into the sun, along with websites that automatically bring up apple app store. Also, ads that are disguised as real news stories should be marked.

Most billboards are an eye sore. They are tolerable only on rural highways.

There are some new communities in north Scottsdale where billboards are illegal and all shop advertising has to be naturalized into the desert landscape. I used to live up there. If you are used to that and then drive to Phoenix, where companies are allowed to light up their ads like it's freaking Vegas, you really notice how distasteful it all is.

The last thing you'd want is for everything to become an HOA, but I think there should be some reasonable legislation to keep things tasteful.
Full disclosure - I work in Advertising  
buford : 9/19/2014 2:27 pm : link
I don't watch a lot of live TV, it's horrible there are so many ads. The little popups on the bottom of the screen really bother me. They are distracting. But unfortunately the ads pay for the show. The amount of money you pay to Cable is not to produce the shows. I wouldn't mind more pay tv, just like I have now with Sirius Radio (regular radio is just horrible). For internet ads, I use Adblock most of the time. I do get kind of annoyed when stuff pops up on my FB feed from stuff I've googled. When we had the Engagement Ring thread, I clicked on the blue nile link and I was getting pictures of rings for days. All you have to do is click on the ad and say 'I don't want to see this' and it stops.
RE: Full disclosure - I work in Advertising  
Ron from Ninerland : 9/19/2014 6:14 pm : link
In comment 11871301 buford said:
Quote:
For internet ads, I use Adblock most of the time. I do get kind of annoyed when stuff pops up on my FB feed from stuff I've googled.


Check out "Facebook purity" It does for facebook what adblock does for the internet. This will get a lot of the garbage out of your newsfeed.
facebook purity - ( New Window )
RE: RE: Full disclosure - I work in Advertising  
mrvax : 9/19/2014 7:26 pm : link
In comment 11871699 Ron from Ninerland said:
Quote:

Check out "Facebook purity" It does for facebook what adblock does for the internet. This will get a lot of the garbage out of your newsfeed. facebook purity - ( New Window )


Thanks, Ron. I use Facebook maybe 2x a year but my wife is on it all the time.
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