Advertising

I am on the road to recovery. Since discharge from the rehabilitation hospital, I have been exercising every day. Either mid-morning or mid-afternoon, I head downstairs to the home gym. Six weeks ago I could not go up and down stairs. I start out with 15 minutes on the stepper and then spend 15 minutes on the treadmill. From there I lay down on the exercise bench, strap weights to my ankles, and then do a routine of leg lifts. It is hard to fast-forward over the ads on the wall TV while lying on the bench. I watched the ads. Painful. It reminded me of the Olympics.

It was a privilege to be able to attend the Olympics, from opening ceremony to closing ceremony, in Atlanta (1996), Nagano (1998), and Sydney (2000). The ceremonies get more extravagant each year and you have to wonder how they are going to top it the following year. 

The Atlanta Olympic Games was the beginning of e-business for IBM. A member of my team built an experimental “ticket server” to see if we could sell tickets to the Games online. At the time, 1995, it was the largest e-commerce site on the Internet. We sold $5 million of tickets.

The first commercial customer for the technology followed later that year by IBM at L.L. Bean.

The athletes who compete to win or lose by a small fraction of a second are truly incredible and a tribute to them and their countries. The other thing about the Olympic Games which gets more incredible each year is the advertising. Some tell me I am in the minority on the issue, but I think the amount of advertising is over the top. When is enough enough? It is clear NBC’s top priority is advertising revenue. Athletes, consumers, and viewers are second priority. I have seen cases where a race was seconds from ending when the video cut over to an ad. If you watch the Olympics on a mobile device, you will frequently see, “Coverage Will Resume Shortly”. That means they have not sold as many ads as for live TV and have nothing else to show. Dead time.

An analysis of the programming would likely show the following as the most repeated phrases during the Games.

• Coming up
• We’ll be right back
• When we come back
• After the break
• Right after this
• Stay with us

Years ago, I had the privilege of sitting next to Bob Costas at a dinner. What a nice and impressive man. He looked much younger than his then 64 years. When I heard him say on TV, “stay with us”, I suspected he was inwardly saying, “I know you have already seen these ads dozens of times and could recite them word for word, and I also know you are likely going to the kitchen or lavatory while they are playing even though consultants who measure viewers are telling the advertisers how many millions of people were watching.

Producers, like journalists and publishers, deserve to be compensated for the value they create. Lugging robotic video cameras and support people plus knowledgeable announcers costs a lot of money. The question is how do consumers pay? One way is to watch two hours of Olympic Games and an hour of droning highly duplicative advertisements, like today. Another model is to pay a fee per view. Instead of watching three hours of Olympic Games loaded with repeating ads, you pay a fee and watch streaming of the two hours of Olympic Games. Another example is to watch events and news via YouTube TV. I watch the 6p.m. news at 6:30p.m., 100% news. Another model could be, if you are willing to provide some personal preferences and endure a full load of advertising but the ads are tailored to things relevant to you based on your profile. There are many possible models but the droning of duplicate ads on a high frequency basis may be the worst model to many of us.

Now, a few facts you may find interesting. Broadcast networks show 16–18 minutes of ads per hour, meaning only about 42–44 minutes of actual programming. Children’s programming is federally capped by the Children’s Television Act at 10.5 minutes/hour on weekends and 12 minutes/hour on weekdays. A standard commercial break runs about 2–3.5 minutes and typically contains 5–7 thirty-second spots, or up to 14 fifteen-second spots, usually a mix of both. A one-hour drama usually has 4–6 separate breaks, adding up to roughly 28–45 individual ads per hour depending on the network.

Since the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act passed in 2010, TV stations and cable/satellite providers are legally barred from making commercials louder on average than the programs they run alongside. Ads must match the average loudness of surrounding programming, using a standard measurement. So, no, nothing is technically cranking the volume knob up for you like it used to. HOWEVER, the volume does feel louder. The trick is “perceived loudness,” not actual peak volume:

Most programs use a wide mix of quiet and loud moments for dramatic effect (whispered dialogue, then a bang), while ads flatten everything close to the loudness ceiling for the entire 30 seconds. So even though an ad’s peak never exceeds the show’s peak, its average volume is much closer to the max the whole time, making it feel like a “wall of sound” according the FCC.

Advertisers often frequency emphasis to boost the 1–4 kHz range where human hearing is most sensitive (voices, jingles), which makes ads punch through even at compliant volume levels. They use sudden contrast, going from a quiet “we’ll be right back” straight into an upbeat jingle to create a jarring perceptual jump even when the actual decibel increase is small.

Next week: Prescription Drug Advertising