TV Advertising Can Make TV Viewing More Enjoyable

Posted Feb 28 in Uncategorized tagged , ,

New research has found that TV advertising actually makes TV viewing more enjoyable… but only for TV shows that people were not finding all that enjoyable to watch! Although this seems obvious, the implications are quite interesting, and should (but probably wont!) lead to more interesting media planning practices.

Instead of interrupting the TV shows that people are highly engaged with and love to watch, media planners could instead be aiming to place ads in shows that people watch passively – and enhance the viewing experience of these shows. That is, media planners should potentially avoid the high rating, highly involved TV shows, and go for a second tier, passive viewership. Thus media planners enhance the consumers viewing experience, and do not pay as much in media spend. This could result in a far more effective and engaging media buy for their clients.

This is interesting research, and so far only the press release has been made public. I noticed it published in the weekend paper. The actual research piece is called ‘Enhancing the Television Viewing Experience Through Commercial Interruption’.

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  1. jemster

    Mar 2nd, 2009

    Isn’t the essence of their paper ‘enhancing viewing through interuption’ an oxymoron?

  2. jemster

    Mar 2nd, 2009

    infact, and less flippantly, this theme has long been a topic in the UK. And this isn’t because our ads are brilliant and our TV is shit: neither is the case, or was the case.

    Wendy Gordon published a series of papers titled ‘The ads are better than the programmes, so say some of us?’ back in the 80s (… yes kids as you get older your long term memory sharpens). Making the point that for a large active minority the consumption of the ads was as enjoyable as the programme itself.

    And it is this thinking that enabled the type of advertising that Guinness has created over the years and (although I’m not a fan) Cadbury’s Dairy Milk has done more recently.

    I think the theme of this paper has very important creative implications.

    I’m less convinced however about media strategy that encourages you to target less involving programming so as to make the ads look good.

    Interesting thought though.

  3. nextbrett

    Mar 3rd, 2009

    Does look interesting Fritz!

    More and more we are seeing an integration of content, placement and advertising. Perhaps advertising is dying as we see brands going straight to the source – maybe we need a better word!

    I can’t help but notice how this trend appears to be following the direction of the internet as publishers and advertisers are creating richer user experiences by working together.

  4. Fritz Bachen

    Mar 6th, 2009

    Jemster, another engligh friend of mine also said the theory had been hanging around for years. However, I think many media planners have been interested in spending as much of the client money as possible and always tend to favour higher rating and higher engaged TV shows – just becuase they can – without thinking of the relationship between ads, content and viewer.

    Nextbrett totally agree – its an interesting area and just needs further exploration.

  5. jemster

    Mar 6th, 2009

    Couldn’t agree more with you point about media planners not looking at the context of their placement Fritz.

    However it also cuts both ways, there is also a body of evidence -mainly from people like Millward Brown- to suggest that the viewing experience has a profound effect on the consumption of advertising. Their thesis (if you could call it that) is that a positive and engaged viewer is more likely to view the advertising positively.

    This raises the alarming thought that the content and quality of programming pre-conditions the viewer to consume the advertising.

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