You know what I don't miss about TV since I stopped watching it? Ads. Those horrible, horrible ads that make pre-roll ads on YouTube seem sane. I have the suspicion that with the over-saturation of advertisement, there will soon be a day where content makers prefer a more "shareware" model that the "freeware with ads" that currently exists. If it worked for music and TV, I wonder why they're not doing the same with TV. (Well, they do with subscription channels like HBO on cable, but that too could eventually be changed to direct sales over the Internet.)
Ads still work, though. As proof, the gigantic amount of money spent for political advertisement during the US election (hundreds of millions of dollars). Are they effective? Well, even though the Republican spent over twice as much as Democrats, most of what they spent was on TV ads rather than "getting out the vote" efforts in the counties. The results speak for themselves. Once inundated with TV ads, we tend to ignore them and give more attention to other forms of communication.
And yet it's still a vicious cycle: For as long as there is perceived value in TV ads, most TV shows will remain there exclusively. Slowly though, I hope they see the value in targeted advertisement on the Internet, and realize that most people below 30 don't pay any attention to TV ads anymore.
Published on November 24, 2012 at 20:55 EST
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