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Television Media Technology

TiVo Causes Increase in Product Placement 507

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the i-do-what-they-do-on-the-tv dept.
ndansmith writes "Wired has got an article on how TiVo and other 'ad-skipping technologies' have caused an upsurge in product placements on network television shows. The 84% increase in product placements on TV over the last year has drawn protests from both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. An example from the article: 'In a recent episode of the NBC series Medium, writers had to work the movie Memoirs of a Geisha into the dialogue three times because of a deal the network made with Sony earlier in the season. They even had the characters go on a date to an early screening of the movie and bump into friends who had just viewed Geisha to tell them how good it was.' Readers may also remember a controversial Cisco Systems product placement on Fox's 24."
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TiVo Causes Increase in Product Placement More

TiVo Causes Increase in Product Placement

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  • And the winner is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by phpm0nkey ( 768038 ) * on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:30AM (#14244172) Homepage
    Shake's 12 minute commercial [tvsquad.com] for Boost Mobile! [boostmobile.com]

    OK, so they were taking a shot at product placement in TV shows, but still, damn. I hope everyone at Williams Street got some free phones.
    • Dont forget Axe Body Spray! (tm)

      In all seriousness, that was a pretty funny one. I havent seen any new ones of those in awhile, still like the PDA episode...

      "Here, take it. It makes me look like a hillbilly."

      • Re:And the winner is... (Score:4, Funny)

        by GeekyMike ( 575177 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:43AM (#14244257)
        I like the Axe commercial with the hot girl bathing someone "ooh, you're a dirty boy, how old are you?" "22" "Ooh, yes you are"

        I laughed so hard the first time I saw that. I don't think I would commercial skip because I am afraid I will miss some of the better forms of comedy on television (reference the CITI identity theft service commercial series). Then again, I could skip the personal injury lawyer commercials and their darn jingles.

        • Re:Quite frankly, (Score:5, Insightful)

          by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:04AM (#14244588)

          This might not be their biggest problem (TiVO). Networks seem to have tapped into this mentality that tries the patience of its viewers every step of the way. It's not just the commercials any more. Now it's having to endure visual clutter like the station ID logo, and these rediculous sliders that zip in and out at the bottom of the screen just after we've already been subject to four or more commercials.

          I've found this so annoying in fact, that I've started to look at alternative forms of distraction. Podcasts have grown to fill that niche. They're great- they are personal, it's easy to connect with the producers, and they are/can be eductional and/or informative. Best of all, there are few if any commercials, and NO ANNOYING LOGOS OR SLIDERS. That's gets my vote hands down.

          • Re:Quite frankly, (Score:3, Interesting)

            by ryanov ( 193048 )
            FX is the worst offender. I was watching Disclosure once, bad enough, and the fucking Nip/Tuck ad at the bottom of the screen was metal on metal.

            • Re:Quite frankly, (Score:5, Interesting)

              by h4rm0ny ( 722443 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @03:49AM (#14244902) Journal

              When I lived in the USA (British native for reference), I found your TV unbearable. Adverts popped up at random timings and without any kind of warning. Here in the UK, you can actually plan aroud the commercial breaks - it's a half-hour program, you get a few minutes after quarter of an hour. Just right to nip to the loo or make some tea.

              I'm hoping that it doesn't spread like trailers on DVDs is starting to. I bought a DVD recently and up came trailers for other DVDs the company marketing people thought I might like. Will definitely be keeping an eye out for which company releases the next film I might be tempted to buy. Same applies to the two-minute piracy warning - I paid for the DVD. I am NOT their target audience.

              • Re:Quite frankly, (Score:5, Insightful)

                by ComaVN ( 325750 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @04:34AM (#14244994)
                I'm hoping that it doesn't spread like trailers on DVDs is starting to. I bought a DVD recently and up came trailers for other DVDs the company marketing people thought I might like. Will definitely be keeping an eye out for which company releases the next film I might be tempted to buy. Same applies to the two-minute piracy warning - I paid for the DVD. I am NOT their target audience.

                That pisses me off, too. I think it's part of a secret plot to make pirated dvds actually more attractive (ignoring the price) than the real thing. I'm not sure how the movie industry expects to profit from this though.

                • Re:Quite frankly, (Score:5, Funny)

                  by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @11:49AM (#14247009)
                  Yeah, product placement really galls me. After a long day at work, I come home and just want to unwind with a sitcom and a cold Budweiser, king of beers. But then I'm subjected to a bunch of product placement. I swear, it's enough to make me need an Advil, which is recommended by four out of five doctors. So instead of watching a sitcom, I go for a long ride in my Lexus, with its roomy interior, six-way adjustable seating, and powerful V6 engine.
              • If i had ever bought a DVD with a 2 minute forced viewing ad or warning, i'd take the dvd back complaining that it didnt work in my dvd player, and get another movie for the same price, then off i go to the pirate bay to pick up the movie WITHOUTH the ad.

              • Re:Quite frankly, (Score:3, Interesting)

                by 4of12 ( 97621 )
                Same applies to the two-minute piracy warning - I paid for the DVD. I am NOT their target audience.

                To be sure.

                I'm curious, though, (I, too, buy almost-too-exhorbitantly-priced, legal DVDs) whether the cheap pirated DVDs also come with the imposing FBI/Interpol Warning message on them, too? You know, for authenticity's sake:)? I'm sure the producers ands buyers get a smile out of them, too.

          • Re:Quite frankly, (Score:3, Informative)

            by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
            Even without Tivo, we've gotten to the point where we just tape everything on the VCR and watch it later. Usually, I'd rather watch tv on the weekends, but most of the shows I watch are during the week. So I just tape them and watch them later. This has been possible for 20 years. I don't know why it hasn't been a problem before. I think that tv shows are just looking for an excuse to put out more ads. I mean, I don't know "that many" people with tivos. certainly not a big percentage compared to thos

          • Where's the value added? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) <.ten.yxox. .ta. .nidak.todhsals.> on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @08:50AM (#14245599) Homepage Journal
            Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

            Last season I started to watch the Shield on FX, after having watched the previous season on my computer by bittorrenting the episodes a day or two after they were released, and I found that the downloaded episodes made for a 1000% better TV-watching experience. No sliders, no moving graphics in the bottom of the screen, no station ID logos, and higher quality than my analog TV.

            Someone should clue the local TV stations into a phrase: "value added." They have none. Right now they exist only because they have a monopoly on content (at least at the level of effort that most non-technical users are willing to expend). But as that monopoly breaks down and viewers start to get flooded with content from other places, they're going to be in real trouble.

            I still watch a few TV shows, mostly as a social thing with friends, but if it weren't for the fact that we just enjoy getting together once a week and ordering pizza, I'd probably just cancel everything but my basic cable subscription and watch tv shows when they hit NetFlix.
          • Best of all, there are few if any commercials, and NO ANNOYING LOGOS OR SLIDERS. That's gets my vote hands down.

            I agree, and it's absolute worst when those sliders happen during a fast paced game like basketball. Or the last two minutes of a football game and the score is tied and we have to listen to who's f-ing who on an "All New Desperate Houswives."

            It makes me sick. At least take a tip from Google and target your adds

          • Re:Quite frankly, (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Chelloveck ( 14643 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @10:35AM (#14246191)
            Now it's having to endure visual clutter like the station ID logo, and these rediculous sliders that zip in and out at the bottom of the screen just after we've already been subject to four or more commercials.

            I predict that within the next year we'll see stations running a constant advertising crawler. They'l probably shrink the size of the actual content area and fill the margins with advertising, much like CNN does with its stock ticker, weather, etc. Ha! Try to skip that! I further predict that within another year this practice will be commonplace and used on the majority of channels.

            In fact, this may drive wide-screen format for shooting new shows. The shows will be shot in 16:9 and broadcast full-screen, with the ads taking up the remaining space. And no, those of you with wide-format TVs won't be able to just crop out the ads. Some shows will be broadcast with the content at the top of the screen and ads at the bottom. Some will have the content at the bottom and ads at the top. Some will have content in the middle and ads both top and bottom. And some will even flip the ad and content panes mid-show. If you want to see the shows ad-free you'll have to buy the DVDs. (Or, of course, download pirated copies that have already been cropped.)

        • I agree whole heartedly, all it takes to get people to watch commercials is clever/entertaining commercials. I for one will always stop and watch a Jack in the Box commercial, even as I skip over the others. Why? 'Cause they're funny as hell (usually)...

        • Re:And the winner is... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by lysergic.acid ( 845423 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @03:42AM (#14244885) Homepage

          i think the ratio of truly funny commercials to complete crap ones is pretty low. wouldn't you rather be watching the actual programming that had you watching that channel in the first place?

          it's kinda like, yea, once in a while you might see something entertaining while sitting in traffic, but do you really wanna sit in traffic all day long just so you can catch those rare moments?

    • the AQHF bit was freaking awesome.

      Second has to go to the movie Torque when they had that stupid bike fight in front the conspicously placed Mountain Dew and Pepsi ads...

      • Re:2nd place goes to movie TORQUE (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        um... did you see I, Robot? now THAT is hardcore product placement. *goes to buy Converse All-Stars Vintage 2004 online to get shipped by Fed-Ex*

        • Why the Hell would somebody in the future be so desperate to get hold of some boring old trainers from some random year in the past? This happened at the very start and was outstandingly obvious. Pretty much destroyed any benefit of the doubt I'd managed to cling onto before seeing the film.

          Don't forget the Audi product placement too. I hope the director got a nice cut of the bribe for that to compensate him for his loss of self-respect. The film might as well have been a very long advert. This is the d
        • um... did you see I, Robot? now THAT is hardcore product placement.

          Actually, I'd argue that iRobot had commercials in it. I noticed that ALL of the product placement happens within specific blocks, right next to each other. Every now and then they take a break from the action to tell you all about cars, shoes and package delivery. Then no mention until 30 minutes later, at which all three products are seen again.

    • Viral Videos & Ads [funnyplace.org] site has one (Metamorphosis) of the AXE commercials. Are there any more out there?
    • I remember the late 80's.
      We just watched our G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons.
      (I guess some people watched My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake.)

      Those commercials even had commercials.
      (Even though the commercial interruptions usually were for the same toys.)

  • Good or Bad? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Donniedarkness ( 895066 ) <Donniedarkness@g ... BSDcom minus bsd> on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:31AM (#14244176) Homepage
    While there are obvious disadvantages to this (such as crappier, cheesier scripts), couldn't this be a good thing? I mean, wouldn't you guys like it if commercials were cut down signifigantly? I know that I would.

    • Re:Good or Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by servognome ( 738846 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:36AM (#14244210)
      I mean, wouldn't you guys like it if commercials were cut down signifigantly?

      Not at the price of hurting the actual show. I can buy DVDs and not worry about commercials, or just go get food during commercial breaks. Product placement doesn't give you those options.

      • Re:Good or Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Loconut1389 ( 455297 ) * on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:56AM (#14244319)
        I would -never- watch Lost live on TV for one simple reason - commercials. Lost is such a film-like script, the commercials would totally ruin the feel. We missed the first season and rented it on DVD via Netflix (a godsend for tv series!), and watched the whole thing nearly straight through. After getting the 5.1 dolby digital and the full cinematic effect unbroken by tampon and maxi pad commercials, there's no way I'd ever watch a show like that on TV again. I just bought my wife a 140 hour TiVo for Christmas which will arrive this week- I'd consider watching a show like Lost on the TiVo if the commercial skipping worked out. I'd watch comedies and other less immersive television on live TV, but I think for me the days of watching commercials are generally over.

        If they start putting placements in the show to the point it's like the Truman Show, they'll lose much of the (large amount of) money I spend yearly when DVD release time comes out.

        Unfortunately, it's not like they can edit that crap back out before the DVD release without affecting the show even more.

        Placements are a lose lose. If you're paying for the DVD, you shouldn't have to pay for the commercials. Perhaps TiVo needs to kick back a little money to the networks somehow. I know I'd pay an extra couple bucks a month if it meant no ads for me. Especially if networks implemented something that signaled to the TiVo "ok, here's where the ads start.... here's where they end" so when you play the show back, it was completely ad-free, it would not only save space, but would be a nice perk for the customers.

        • Re:Good or Bad? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by shmlco ( 594907 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:29AM (#14244452) Homepage
          Not to mention that placements bias networks toward shows on which placements are possible. Be kind of hard, for example, to to place a Pepsi or Apple product on a show like Firefly. (Though it might be worthwhile starting a Blue Sun corporation. Hmmm.....)

        • Re:Good or Bad? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by HD Webdev ( 247266 )
          Unfortunately, it's not like they can edit that crap back out before the DVD release without affecting the show even more.

          Sure they can. They don't just film one version of a scene.

          What they have planned is that they will switch products depending on who will pay for it on the DVD and who the target audience is for a particular version of a DVD. For example, DVDs destined for Mexico will have different products shown vs what is seen in a North American DVD release.

      • Re:Good or Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by strider44 ( 650833 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:48AM (#14244537)
        In my humble opinion, there's bad product placement (see I Robot) but there's also good product placement as well (see Blade Runner). I hate it when advertisers force writers to write their product in the script then portrey it as part of the story, but I don't mind at all having a writer think "OK we have a futuristic setting where I want ads here" and then cutting a deal with the corperations for product placement there.

        Even having a car in there where it doesn't matter which car it is, I don't mind them giving the car to the highest bidder, but having the actors say "nothing drives like a Ford!" while they're driving it makes me cringe. Basically as long as it's at the writers convenience it's good, but when it's at the advertisers convenience it's bad.

        • Re:Good or Bad? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Chelloveck ( 14643 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @10:15AM (#14245996)

          I thought the product placement in Minority Report was extremely well done. It was kind of in-your-face, but it needed to be. It actually advanced the plot. I think avoiding product placement and using obviously fake brands would have detracted from the movie. "John Anderton, you look like you could use a Duff Lite!" doesn't have the same feel to it.

          You couldn't get away with this in many movies, but once in a while it works.

      • Re:Good or Bad? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TrekCycling ( 468080 )
        Exactly. If the powers that be can't adjust and find a more creative way to make money (say, give Tivo users free movie tickets if they watch 15 downloaded ads, or something) then eventually I just won't watch television. If it turns so bad (and it's already pure fluff right now for the most part) that it's pretty much wall to wall product placement, if the inegrity of the writing is so compromised because of product placement, then I just won't watch TV. I guess that's the evolution of TV.

        Put 1 or 2 ads at

    • Re:Good or Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by yamla ( 136560 ) <chris@@@hypocrite...org> on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:37AM (#14244215)
      I don't get it. How could turning the whole show into a commercial be considered cutting down on commercials?

    • I was wondering that myself. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Something about this still made me feel uneasy. Now I think I know what it is--the problem is that you don't realize you're being advertised-to. In magazines, ads which might be mistaken for articles are supposed to be clearly marked, usually by writing "Advertisement" across the top. Infomercials usually begin with "The following is a paid program." But infomercials are sneaky, sort of like subliminal advertising was supposed to be.

      I don't specifically object to paid placement, but I'd like for it to b
    • Somehow, it doesn't seem to be working that way. From what I've seen of Big Entertainment(TM), they'll likely keep taking their regular ads and be happy to take any placement ads on top of that. Like with movies, ticket prices, leader ads and DVD income wasn't enough, they had to do Coke placement too.

      Heck, at least one entire episode of American Chopper was more or less a product placement ad, the one I remember was one for Gillette where they made a "theme bike" in the style of the M3 razor they were la

    • Good AND bad. (Score:5, Funny)

      by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:51AM (#14244296)
      Good - Victorias Secret product placement.

      Bad - Hemorroid cream product placement.

    • Re:Good or Bad? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:06AM (#14244361) Homepage Journal
      Something I forgot to mention, was that PVRs really aren't broadly accepted, so TiVo seems to be a bit of a red herring. I don't see a 10% installed base of PVRs (if it is that, I think last I heard, it was 6-8%) as sufficient justification of inserting ads as part of the shows themselves.

      I will say I'm setting up a Myth system in part because of the ads, there are way too many and way too lame. Using tapes is getting annoying.

  • Nothing for you to see here... (Score:4, Funny)

    by imag0 ( 605684 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:31AM (#14244177) Homepage
    hehe. First thing I thought of after reading the blurb...

    Nothing for you to see here. BROUGHT TO YOU BY CISCO SWITCHES AND NETWORKING APPLIANCES! Please move along.

  • Artistic integrity? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mat catastrophe ( 105256 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:31AM (#14244180) Homepage

    From the article:

    "some writers are putting up a fight, demanding more pay in exchange for scripting product plugs into their shows ."

    So, in other words, it isn't like they are concerned about becoming shills...only that they aren't paid enough to be whores.

    • Porn (Score:5, Funny)

      by Freaky Spook ( 811861 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:46AM (#14244276)
      Wait till the porn industry starts using product placment, it will soon filter down to mainstream media in a more popular way!

      <i>"After giving head nothing gets the taste out of my mouth better then mentos, my mouth is fresh and im ready to do the double penetration shot"</i>
    • So the question isn't "are they whores?"; that's a given. The question is, should they charge more for more unpleasant/degrading services. I think you'll find that your friendly neighborhood hooker charges more for anal than she does for a quick hand-job--why shouldn't these guys do the same? :)

    • Re:Artistic integrity? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:09AM (#14244368) Homepage
      So, in other words, it isn't like they are concerned about becoming shills...only that they aren't paid enough to be whores.

      As much as everyone likes to bash the writers, it doesn't strike me as that outrageous.

      When the network starts collecting money so that the people who write the scripts will say certain things, the writers have to work harder to do their episodes and still meet the networks obligations.

      And if the writing is sucky because they were busy working in product placement, they're the ones who get fired; not the guy who got the comission for landing the deal.

      I must be soul-sucking enough to write the dreck that is on TV, knowing your bosses are making more money so you can be forced to write even more dreck with product-placement would be too much.

      They're effectively now writing ad-copy as well as scripts.

  • Inevitable (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Twisted64 ( 837490 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:31AM (#14244181) Homepage
    I suppose it was inevitable really... they'll always find a way to get to us. Here's hoping we never get quite as bad as depicted in "The Truman Show" though. I almost crapped my pants when I watched "I, Robot" and "The Island" and saw all the stuff they were pushing along with the film.

    • Re:Inevitable (Score:3, Interesting)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 )
      Agreed. Believe it or not, I actually liked I, Robot. But why is a movie having to resort to such blatant product placement? Is it greed? Or are they truly unable to produce a profit without it?

      I'm guessing it's that the studio overall doesn't just have to cover the movie itself, but also all of the bombs it made that year. If only it was possible to have a better screening process so that the better movies were made. Would it help if they looked for good movies, rather then movies they think will sell well

      • Re:Inevitable (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ZakuSage ( 874456 )
        Hmm... this really brings up the question on whether or not good movies do sell. I can come up with many examples of movies (and games for that matter) that are quite excellent but sell like crap. Likewise I can come up with many examples of movies and games that are shit and sell way too well. The focus on these two mediums has far too much to do with advertising.

        Look at something like Fantastic Four, which really only sold well because you see advertisments for it every 5 minutes, both for the theatrical

    • I hate to say it, I completely ignore that kind of things...

      I can't rememeber a single product placement in "I Robot" and I've watched it more then a few times now.

    • Re:Inevitable (Score:3, Insightful)

      by chill ( 34294 )
      Well, with I, Robot I didn't have a big problem. Hell, I was looking at it like "Converse? Wow, they are digging. People who've read Asimov's works would remember those from 20 years ago. Buy them now? No."

      Hey, a Chicago cop that makes enough to drive a Mercedes? And he isn't on the take? Right...

      Also, "US Robotics" now THAT is funny. Are they still in business? Similar to the placement SGI had in "Lost In Space" -- is SGI still in business? Wow!

      The product placements I can't stand are that every

    • Orange Ads (Score:3, Informative)

      by Random_Goblin ( 781985 )
      Over here in the UK the mobile phone company orange runs movie ads in cinemas.

      The basic plot of which is a bunch of marketing types from orange proceed to ruin a movie, with product placement, ringtone tie-ins and general marketing bollocks.

      The punch line being "don't let a mobile ruin your movie"; A public service announcement to turn off mobile phones in the cinemas.

      Although these are satirical ads, you just know that the writers are basing the marketing droids on real people/events.

      Most people wh

  • It seems kind of pathetic to do that. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Antony-Kyre ( 807195 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:32AM (#14244183)
    Maybe it's time for television to evolve into something else. How much cheaper is our current cable television due to advertisements? How much would it cost if we stripped the ads out of the shows and just paid more for cable access?
    • I dont know about you but Comcast just made my very very basic cable a good 80-90 cents cheaper. Now this probobly isnt because of the ads more because they are cutting every single useful non-broadcast channel. I dont even get to keep a news network anymore but apparently I cant complain since they made it cheaper.
    • Instead of commercials, perhaps we could just have popups during the program itself. Sure, it might get annoying. It needs to be respectful in size though, nothing like what FX (I think) does.

      With on demand viewing from certain cable providers, maybe they should start offering 24 hour viewing to certain t.v. episodes sans popups for like 99 cents.

    • Re:It seems kind of pathetic to do that. (Score:5, Informative)

      by wyldeone ( 785673 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:43AM (#14244256) Homepage Journal
      You don't seem to have a very good grasp on how this system works. The money that you pay each month to the cable company goes to the cable company in return for offering the service—not to the stations. The stations, meanwhile, make (nearly) all their money on advertising. Thus the amount of ads has nothing to do with your cable bill.
    • How much cheaper is cable because of advertisements?

      Umm, on the order of 99.9% cheaper. Seriously, the overwhelming majority of costs are paid for by advertising. Consider the difference in production quality (ie, film quality, color quality, etc) of your average PBS show (ie, Painting with Bob Ross, Antique Roadshow) versus the average show on cable (ie, Drawn Together, Chapelle Show, The Daily Show), not to mention the costs of a show on one of the major networks.

      Consider what happened with Friends. When
    • Given that my cable here in Britain costs about the same as yours in America, but shows far less adverts, it's not cheaper at all. Here we have laws limiting the time advert breaks can last, and the advert-free BBC providing an alternative if the commerical channels push the limits. Advertisers here have simply learnt that having their advert shown 5 times out of 100 adverts a day is better for them than having it shown 40 times out of 1000, and they would rather have a 5% share of eyeballs than a 4%. The s
  • American Idol is horrible at this. The music videos for a ford explorer, or the coca cola??

    Just wait though it will get worse, with the networking of video games and online services you will see billboards in the background of racing games for products.

  • Solutions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:33AM (#14244193) Homepage Journal
    Those familiar with my anti-copyright ideas know that I've promoted product placement as a partial solution to PVR commercial skipping.

    The advertising community is, yet again, far behind. Tivo is so 2001. BitTorrent and the newer anonymous P2P apps take the problem a step farther.

    With vidgeeks easily editing out commercials for P2P redistribution (this can be time consuming to be frame perfect), it is only a matter of time before they digitally smear out product placement. A little bit of work and you can nuke logos without the MTV blur.

    What will advertisers do next?

    My thought is that we'll see video and audio starting and stopping at different offsets. Imagine -- a scene ends with the audio ending but the video continuing. A character can walk off screen for entire seconds after they're finished talking. If Cisco paid to have the audio portion of the ad start before the video is over. P2P editors could nuke this audio.

    The video could end before the audio, maybe bringing a logo in before a narration is finished. Still, the video portion could be edited to black.

    Pop-up video advertising could be placed like A&E and Bravo do with TB show mentions. In fact, I believe we see more of these mentions to prep us for 3rd party pop-overs. Yet a vidgeek could humorously edit the pop-over to advertise their l33t skills.

    So what is the answer?

    DRM.
    • I think a lot of P2P geeks suffer from the "Collector" syndrome. They want to faithfully record what was aired. I don't think they'll be too keen on editing out a scene with dialog about Coca-Cola. Yes, they take out commercials and network bugs, but I really doubt if placement got to be big that they'd do much about it. Too much placement makes for a crummy show, and who wants to download that anyway, regardless of the editing?

    • Real Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by oGMo ( 379 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:50AM (#14244291)

      The real solution is so simple, it may be beyond the grasp of marketers: make advertisements worth watching.

      It's simple. Why do I skip commercials? They're annoying, loud, repetitive, gaudy, mindless. I don't want to watch them, and the producer believes I won't be watching them (I wonder why?), so they scream and shout to get my attention.

      So make a commercial that's funny, witty, beautiful. And don't play it every commercial break. Make something I want to see again, and instead of skipping it, I'll take advantage of the TiVo and watch it again.

      Such a thing is possible: such commercials already exist. They've few and far between, but we've probably all seen at least one or two. It's possible. If the existing ad agencies can't come up with them, find new ones. I bet there are a thousand independent filmmakers out there who could come up with 30 second clips that fit this bill on half the budget they usually spend.

      This is the real solution, one that doesn't involve literally forcing us to watch with DRM and legislation. Which is going to alienate people? Making something they desire, or making it illegal to avoid something they don't?

      • Re:Real Solution (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dada21 ( 163177 ) *
        make advertisements worth watching.

        I agree. Have you seen the trash graduating with a marketing /advertising degree?

        So make a commercial that's funny, witty, beautiful.

        More boobs, less FCC?

        I bet there are a thousand independent filmmakers out there who could come up with 30 second clips that fit this bill on half the budget they usually spend.

        I agree. If Coke had a "Make us a free ad and we'll pay to run the top 10" you'd have 5000 filmmakers dying for the publicity.

        That is the problem. You have 864 ad

      • Re:Real Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by The Man ( 684 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:20AM (#14244414) Homepage
        The real solution is so simple, it may be beyond the grasp of marketers: make advertisements worth watching.

        You're approaching this from the wrong direction: making advertisements worth watching is an action to be undertaken by the advertisers and their customers. This presumes they are the people with the problem. They aren't; they're making plenty of money already; PVRs and other changes in the market are crimping their ability to make more money, but they're doing fine as it is. Being greedy isn't a "problem" for the greedy individual but rather a never-ending series of opportunities to make more money at your expense. Your comment assumes that finding one way to solidify or increase the revenue stream is sufficient but in fact the media companies are satisfied only when they exhaust all possible such schemes. So in fact the viewer is the one with the problem; without a PVR you have to watch more ads today than ever before, and even with a PVR you get less content than ever before. Either way, you're going to get more product placement as well, because even if the advertisers made "advertisements worth watching" and no one ever edited them out, you can bet that to sustain their revenue growth the advertising agencies and media companies will continue to increase the number of impressions they can sell per 30 minutes of airtime; having more effective advertisements just allows them to charge more, which is great, but they aren't getting their money's worth until every possible second of airtime is sold somehow to someone. The content is the worm, the ads are the hook, and you are the fish. No fisherman cares how good the worm is as long as it covers the hook well enough to tempt the fish. Fish seem willing to overlook a giant, flaming-orange hook so long as it contains the tiniest fragment of long-dead worm or worm substitute, and TV viewers, who live longer than fish and seem to develop a tolerance to "hooks", are no different. The media companies know this and that, as a fish, er, viewer, sucks.

        So there are actually two solutions, one which is realistic and one which is not. The unrealistic solution calls for a contract made between viewers and content producers for a certain amount of ad-free content in exchange for a certain amount of money - the way cable TV was originally set up, in fact. This is unrealistic because, as happened with cable TV, the media companies, never satisfied with merely making a tidy profit, realised that you'll pay just as much for TV with ads as without, so they can actually make money both ways. So much for that. We're left with the REAL SOLUTION that actually works and is guaranteed not to require watching any kind of TV ad, ever, and as a side bonus penalises the greedy bastards who are forcing the issue: DON'T WATCH TELEVISION AT ALL. There's no law (yet) requiring you to consume what the media companies produce. The worm fragments are small, not especially tasty nor healthy, and in virtually all cases unattainable without being hooked anyway. You'll find after a few weeks of altered evening routine that you don't even miss them, and you'll do a boon for your own mind, the economy, and our civilisation's collective future just by not doing something. Why wait? You can solve your problem right now, without any help from anyone, and all you have to do is not do something that seems to be causing you a lot of grief anyway. It's easy, it's free, and it takes no time at all. What better solution could you seek?

      • Re:Real Solution (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Danny Rathjens ( 8471 ) <slashdot2NO@SPAMrathjens.org> on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:28AM (#14244449)
        The real solution is so simple, it may be beyond the grasp of marketers: make advertisements worth watching.

        That is exactly what they are doing; merging the advertisements with content you want to watch.

        Product placements, chain letters, press releases feigning to be news, innocuous logos in video steadily becoming larger, /. stories submitted for profit; did you notice all the places usually void of advertisement that google's viral marketing tactics for gmail invites inveigled their way into? Welcome to the future. The marketers are not missing anything; they are 3 steps ahead of us.

  • Gone with the product placement (Score:5, Funny)

    by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:34AM (#14244198)
    "Frankly Scarlet I don't give a damn... But get some nike air masters and I just might".

  • As I sit here reading slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cherita Chen ( 936355 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:34AM (#14244201) Homepage
    As I sit here, drinking a DITE COKE [dietcoke.com], reading slashdot... I'm asking myself, why don't I have a TIVO [tivo.com] And if I did have one, which network would I choose to record... HBO [hbo.com]? Hmmm.........

    • Tasty (Score:2, Troll)

      by fwitness ( 195565 )
      Or maybe even a SPELL CHECKER to make sure that at least words TYPED IN ALL CAPS or BOLDED WITH HYPERLINKS are spelled right.

      Man. I can't wait till we do product placement for Speak and Spells.

    • Re:As I sit here reading slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)

      by DeafByBeheading ( 881815 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:56AM (#14244317) Journal
      Benjamin: Wayne! Listen, we need to have a talk about Vanderhoff.
                The fact is he's the sponsor and you signed a contract
                guaranteeing him certain concessions, one of them being
                a spot on the show.
      Wayne [holding a Pizza Hut box]: Well that's where I see things just
                a little differently. Contract or no, I will not bow to
                any sponsor.
      Benjamin: I'm sorry you feel that way, but basically it's the nature
                of the beast.
      Wayne [holding a bag of Doritos]: Maybe I'm wrong on this one, but
                for me, the beast doesn't include selling out. Garth, you
                know what I'm talking about, right?
      Garth [wearing head-to-toe Reebok wardrobe]: It's like people only do
                these things because they can get paid. And that's just
                really sad.
      Wayne: I can't talk about it anymore; it's giving me a headache.
      Garth [Dumps two Nuprin pills into Wayne's hand]: Here, take two of these!
      Wayne: Ah, Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different.
      Benjamin: Look, you can stay here in the big leagues and play by the
                rules, or you can go back to the farm club in Aurora. It's
                your choice.
      Wayne: [holding a can of Pepsi] Yes, and it's the choice of a new generation.

  • Doesn't really matter (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:37AM (#14244216) Journal
    It's nice to see the revenue battle not taking the form of buying congressmen for once. It's a battle between those who don't view commercials (which means less money for advertising slots), and the need for the television company to make money. The latest move is to include product-placement. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then those tv shows will be doomed (or they'll stop doing it). It is an interesting battle, as it shows the problem of having entertainment for free. I think the internet sidesteps this issue as the cost is much lower, so more people creating the content are willing to be out of pocket. Unfortunately with tv, this just isn't an option because of the large budgets.

    It could mean the death of tv as we know it. Although I believe that if it does mean the death of tv, tv shows will continue to live in DVD releases (as the audience directly pays for the product and has been successful).
    • It's a battle between those who don't view commercials (which means less money for advertising slots), and the need for the television company to make money.

      And the winner is... those of us who don't watch television at all.
      • How are you winning? You still don't get the content. I guess if your aim is to avoid advertising then yeah, you win. But I'm willing to bet most people DON'T watch tv to avoid adverts, but instead watch it to watch entertaining products (or to watch shows where they don't need to think).
  • http://www.cisco.com/now/24/indexIPcommunications. html [cisco.com] Sorry about the quicktime... Click away...

  • Blurred (Score:2, Insightful)

    by noz ( 253073 )
    I don't watch a lot of American television and I was quite confused when, in Tommy Lee Goes To College, the producers blurred out some signs and t-shirts worn by the plebeans. Was this the effect of sponsorship to remove references to competitors? They couldn't all have been offensive (especially the billboards *grin*).

    • Re:Blurred (Score:3, Informative)

      by Igottapoop ( 762294 )
      In the U.S. they've been doing that for years. The producers have to blur them for two reasons.

      1. The companies buying commercial time (at a later date) may not like having a competitor getting free air time during the show.

      2. The companies that didn't pay for the product placement can actually sue the show if they don't like how their product is being used/displayed during the show and/or what show their product is being shown on.
  • Does the fact that people are using the technology to skip ads not tell the advertisers that, maybe, just maybe, we don't want to see the ads for there crappy product they are trying to pimp? Seems to me that pissing off the majorty of your customers with silly product placements is not the best way to reach the few that do skip your ads. Just my thoughts.

  • The reruns are going to be even worse. (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheNarrator ( 200498 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:45AM (#14244274)
    20 years from now the re-runs are going to look really weird. If they started doing this 20 years ago we'd probably be watching Scooby Doo episodes where Shaggy mentions how comfortable his Dead 70s Brand bell bottoms are. Then again, with modern technology they might start editing old tv shows inserting new scenes to do product placement or just dubbing over them with new brand names.

  • In show ads? Whatever. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Psykechan ( 255694 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @12:52AM (#14244299)
    I'm tired of the networks complaining about loss of ad revenue due to fast forwarding through their ads. I've had a TiVo for going on 5 years now and I have to say that I watch more ads now than I did before.

    Seriously, I don't watch that much TV but what I do watch, I watch multiple times, usually because I'm multitasking doing something else (like posting to /.) and not paying too much attention; the TV is just on in the background and I glance up now and then to view it.

    When the comemercial break comes on though, I'll grab the remote and fast forward through the ads. Since TiVo doesn't auto-skip, I watch the whole commercial break, albiet at quadruple speed. I'll even stop it on ads that grab my interest. Once the show comes back on, I resume playback and go back to whatever I was doing.

    So really, some company that airs ads in shows that I watch are getting more than their money's worth.

    • Re:In show ads? Whatever. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ben Jackson ( 30284 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:21AM (#14244647) Homepage
      Since TiVo doesn't auto-skip, I watch the whole commercial break, albiet at quadruple speed.
      While playing something, hit select - play - select - 3 - 0 - select on the remote to enable 30 second skip. Now that button opposite the 8 second rewind skips 30 seconds instantly. It's much easier (and requires almost no concentration, unlike 60x ffw) to skip commercials that way. You can just mash it 4 or 5 times right into the break (ok, 4 or 500 if you're on a Turner network) and if you land in a commercial, hit it again. Fine tune with some 8s-back.

      As a bonus, you know whenever your Tivo upgrades because you have to turn it on again.

  • I'm used to product placement. I read Slashdot [slashdot.org].

  • Could be worse (Score:2, Informative)

    by Intocabile ( 532593 )
    I watched a Korean drama with a friend and I swear the only purpose of the show was to sell the sound track and promote the artists. Every single episode there were 5 songs that would always have to be played no matter what.

  • how, exactly,... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drewxhawaii ( 922388 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:02AM (#14244348) Homepage
    ...did a couple going to an advanced screening of the film manage to bump into their friends who had already seen it?

    this is my third time reading about it, and i just noticed that.

  • Cisco's products on "24" were part of the story (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SpecialAgentXXX ( 623692 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:13AM (#14244382)
    I didn't mind Cisco's ads on last season's 24. I would rather see the characters using real products like Cisco's IP Phones [cisco.com] than some propmaster's incorrect vision of what an IP phone should look like. Ford also sponsors the show and they drive big Ford trucks. Toyota sponsored the DVD preview of Season 5 and you see Jack driving a Toyota. Last season on Smallville, Clark used the red Old Spice deodorant - it was in his locker and on the big banner over the football field.

    Product placement is only bad when it's inappropriate and doesn't flow with the show. I sure wouldn't want to see Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brien discussing Kotex Tampons [kotex.com] or Vagisil cream [vagisil.com] as he's about to waste some terrorists. Or President Palmer plugging Uncle Ben's rice [unclebens.com] at a press conference. But if they are looking for a USB flash card containing Top Secret information, I don't mind them mentioning SanDisk [sandisk.com].

  • Pay per re-run? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChrisKnight ( 16039 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:15AM (#14244395) Homepage
    With a regular television show the commercials are inserted by the local affiliate as the show is being broadcast. In this way the commercials can be localized for the viewing audience. So, if you watch a five year old television show the commercials are current and not frozen in time from five years back. Now the 'commercials' are a fixed part of the content, and it will not be possible to extract them later.

    But, this begs me to wonder... Advertisers pay for each time a commercial is run. With this new model will they find themselves having to pay a small fee every time a show is aired as a re-run?

    -Chris

  • Product placement is not so bad most of the time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LordZardoz ( 155141 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:27AM (#14244656)
    A few years ago, I decided to specifically watch for product placement, so I tend to notice it enough to make note of it. In general, I keep an eye out for shots that contain an identifying product logo when the logo adds nothing to the story. Some placement, like the Mc Donalds placement in The Fifth Element, are blatant and hard to miss. In I Robot, Wil Smith's "retro" possesions (shoes, music player), arent so subtle. The intrusive ads in Minority Report are odd, they are blatant, but the mechanism for the advertisement is relevant to the plot. Others are easier to miss; Jackie Chan movies seem to feature a Pepsi logo of some sort more often then not.

    Even good product placement is not too hard to spot if you look for it. In general, if manage to notice that one person has, for example, a Nokia phone, then its a safe bet that every other phone will be the same brand. The car driven by the principle character is a favorite target for product placement. Soft drinks are most often one or the other.

    24 Usually handles product placement pretty decently, but I concede that they do a suprising amount of it. The placement for Cisco was perhaps the most blatant, but not quite jarring enough for me to make too much of it. 24 Product placement tends to encompass the following products (that I have noticed),

    Computers: Alot of CTU equipment is Dell. Season 4 had a few Alienware laptops as well.
    Cell Phones: I think Jack uses a Nokia phone.
    Cars: A great deal of Ford SUV's. It appears that Season 5 may use Toyota placements, based on the teaser from the Season 4 box set.

    I consider bad product placement to be any sort of product placement where the product in question becomes the focus of the camera instead of the story at hand. 24 Usually does ok, the Cisco placement aside. They do alot of it, but its done as tastefully enough that it does not annoy me.

    END COMMUNICATION

    END COMMUNICATION

  • Arrested Development pokes fun at this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NotAnotherReboot ( 262125 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @03:50AM (#14244903)
    Apparently Fox asked Arrested Development to try to get some of their sponsor's products in the show. Arrested Development, as usual, takes a humorous take on it.
    Carl Weathers: [about Burger King] I'm going to go get a drink refill. You know you can get unlimited refills on any drink you want?
    Tobias Fünke: It's a great restaurant.
    Narrator (Ron Howard): It sure is!

    In the episode "Motherboy XXX", Barry Zuckerkorn (played by Henry Winkler) says, "I missed breakfast, so I'm on my way to Burger King" and then jumps over the dead shark on the pier. This is, of course, a reference to Henry Winkler's character in "Happy Days" (1974) jumping over a shark while on water-skis, signaling the moment when that show lost its relevance. The phrase "Jumping The Shark" was made popular in the 1990's as a metaphor for a television show reaches its peak. --Amazon.com season 2 quotes page

  • Bizarre logic (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @08:02AM (#14245437)
    OK, so the problem is that adverts have become so intrusive in programming that the audience will spend hundreds of dollars on a device to avoid them. And their solution is "add more adverts which reduce the quality of the shows which attract our audience"? What a great bit of creative thinking.

    I don't know how anyone watches US TV, anyway. I find the less than 10 minutes an hour of adverts on commercial channels here (UK) annoying enough and from the constant "fade-to-black and recap a little" you see in US programmes like Lost or ER, TV in the US is adverts with the odd show crammed in between them.

  • Don't forget: YOU'RE the product, not the ads! (Score:4, Informative)

    by potus98 ( 741836 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @08:07AM (#14245452) Journal

    Television's primary product for sale is not the junk featured in ads, it's YOUR eyeballs. Where do networks get their primary source of revenue? From selling your eyeballs upstream to corporations. The TV shows are just crummy hooks to get your eyeballs for a little while. Is there some level of art, acting, or writing involved? Sure, a little. But the VAST majority of TV programming is happy, blinky stuff to keep you hooked for just a few more minutes.


    I admit that I like plugging in for a little brain-nap myself, but don't forget there ARE other forms of entertainment. I mean, let's not elevate the so-called art of television to some level that we think they're above blatent product placement.

  • Star Trek (Score:4, Funny)

    by thebdj ( 768618 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @09:18AM (#14245702) Journal
    Next thing you know I am going to start seeing editted episode of Star Trek: TNG.

    Worf: Captain, message coming in over *obvious dubbing moment* AT&T.
    Picard: Patch it through.
    *AT&T logo appears on view screen before person starts talking*

    I think that will be when things hit the ultimate low. Well either that, or when they start putting product placement in shows where they should not be.

  • Solution? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MichaelKaiserProScri ( 691448 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @10:45AM (#14246275)
    Run the commercials less often, maybe only once per half hour. Run fewer total commercials. But don't server everybody the SAME commercials. Make part of the "deal" for getting the PVR be that you will be asked to fill out a questionaire. You can leave it blank, or lie, but you will then be served irrelavant commercials. You will still get 2 min per half hour no matter what you answer, so you might as well answer honestly. You can skip them if you want, so it's up to the commercial writers to make sure you don't WANT to skip them. It actually INCREASES the number of ads the station can sell while DECREASING the ad time each individual gets. And since they can give real stats on the number of people they are reaching with each ad, they can vary the price of the ad accordingly. Almost like "pay per click" on the web. Add some interactivity to the ad so 1) people will bother to watch and interact with it, 2) you get some real stats as to whether they DID watch and interact with it.... The technology is all there. Use it. A TiVo is a PC! Even the crappy Explorer 8000 that the cable companies give away is a PC or sorts.

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