Television advertisement
A television advertisement is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization. It conveys a message promoting, and aiming to market, a product, service or idea. Advertisers and marketers may refer to television commercials as TVCs.
Advertising revenue provides a significant portion of the funding for most privately owned television networks. During the 2010s, the number of commercials has grown steadily, though the length of each commercial has diminished. Advertisements of this type have promoted a wide variety of goods, services, and ideas ever since the early days of the history of television.
The viewership of television programming, as measured by companies such as Nielsen Media Research in the United States, or BARB in the UK, is often used as a metric for television advertisement placement, and consequently, for the rates which broadcasters charge to advertisers to air within a given network, television program, or time of day.
In multiple countries, including the United States, television campaign advertisements are commonplace in a political campaign. In other countries, such as France, political advertising on television is heavily restricted, while some countries, such as Norway, completely ban political advertisements.
The first official paid television advertisement came out in the United States on July 1, 1941, at 2:30 p.m., over New York station WNBT before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The announcement for Bulova watches, for which the company paid anywhere from $4.00 to $9.00, displayed a WNBT test pattern modified to look like a clock with the hands showing the time. The Bulova logo, with the phrase "Bulova Watch Time", appeared in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern while the second hand swept around the dial for one minute. The first TV ad broadcast in the UK went on air on ITV on September 22, 1955, advertising Gibbs SR toothpaste. In Asia, the first TV ad broadcast appeared on Nippon Television in Tokyo on August 28, 1953, advertising Seikosha ; it also displayed a clock with the current time.
The television market has grown to such an extent that it was estimated to reach $69.87 billion for TV ad spending in the United States for 2018.
General background
Television advertising involves three main tasks: creating a television advertisement that meets broadcast standards, placing the advertisement on television to reach the desired customer and then measuring the outcomes of these ads, including the return on investment.To accomplish the first step means different things to different parts of the world depending on the regulations in place. In the UK for example, clearance must be given by the body Clearcast. Another example is Venezuela where clearance is governed by a body called El Centro Nacional Autónomo de la Cinematografía. The clearance provides a guarantee to the broadcasters that the content of the advertisement meets legal guidelines. Because of this, special extended clearance sometimes applies to food and medical products as well as gambling advertisements.
The second is the process of TV advertising delivery and usually incorporates the involvement of a post-production house, a media agency, advertising distribution specialists and the end-goal, the broadcasters.
At New York's TV Week in November 2018, the TV advertising model was described by Turner Broadcasting System as broken.
TV advertisement trends
Internet and digital
However, with the emergence of over-the-top media services, the Internet itself has become a platform for television, and hence TV advertising. TV attribution is a marketing concept whereby the impact television ads have on consumers is measured.Addressable television is where targeted advertising is used on digital platforms, so two people watching the same show receive different ads.
Digital television recorders and advertisement skipping
After the video cassette recorder became popular in the 1980s, the television industry began studying the impact of users fast-forwarding through commercials. Advertising agencies fought the trend by making them more entertaining. The introduction of digital video recorders, such as TiVo, and services like Sky+, Dish Network and Astro MAX, which allow the recording of television programs into a hard drive, also enabled viewers to fast-forward or automatically skip through advertisements of recorded programs.At the end of 2008, 22% of UK households had a DTR. The majority of these households had Sky+ and data from these homes shows that, once a household gets a DTR, they watch 17% more television. 82% of their viewing is to normal, linear, broadcast TV without fast-forwarding the ads. In the 18% of TV viewing that is time-shifted, viewers still watch 30% of the ads at normal speed. Overall, the extra viewing encouraged by owning a DTR results in viewers watching 2% more ads at normal speed than they did before the DTR was installed.
The SkyView evidence is reinforced by studies on actual DTR behaviour by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board and the London Business School.
Product placement
Other forms of TV advertising include product placement advertising in the TV shows themselves. For example, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition advertises Sears, Kenmore, and the Home Depot by specifically using products from these companies, and some sports events like the Monster Energy Cup of NASCAR are named after sponsors, and race cars are frequently covered in advertisements.Today's sports advertisements frequently push boundaries or test out innovative methods using digital advances, depending less and less on the "spots and dots", the conventional 30-second commercials on television and radio. Additionally, companies are becoming more closely associated with sports content, particularly if it connects them to a digital audience made up mostly of highly sought-after men and women between the ages of 18 and 34. A number of major sporting venues in North America are named for commercial companies, dating back as far as Wrigley Field. Television programs delivered through new mediums such as streaming online video also bring different opportunities to the traditional methods of generating revenue from television advertising.Overlay advertisements
Another type of advertisement shown increasingly, mostly for advertising TV shows on the same channel, is an ad overlay at the bottom of the TV screen, which blocks out some of the picture. "Banners", or "Logo Bugs", as they are called, are referred to by media companies as Secondary Events. This is done in much the same way as a severe weather warning is done, only these happen more frequently. They may sometimes take up only 5 to 10 per cent of the screen, but in the extreme, they can take up as much as 25 per cent of the viewing area. Subtitles that are part of the programme content can be completely obscured by banners. Some even make noise or move across the screen. One example is the 2E ads for Three Moons Over Milford, which was broadcast in the months before the TV show's première. A video taking up approximately 25 per cent of the bottom-left portion of the screen would show a comet impacting into the moon with an accompanying explosion, during another television programme. Another example is used in Poland to use any premieres of new shows/new seasons of the same show. TVP has taken a step further, overlaying on screen not only the channel on which the show is premiered, but also on a sister channel.Interactive advertisements
Online video directories are an emerging form of interactive advertising, which help in recalling and responding to advertising produced primarily for television. These directories also have the potential to offer other value-added services, such as response sheets and click-to-call, which enhance the scope of the interaction with the brand. Researchers have found that For some consumer types and for specific ad types, that the standard linear advertising format is really superior to interactive advertising. Particularly, they have discovered that a cognitive "matching" of the system's characteristics and the demands of the customer group appears to be crucial.Shorter commercial breaks
During the 2008–09 TV season, Fox experimented with a new strategy, which the network dubbed "Remote-Free TV". Episodes of Fringe and Dollhouse contained approximately ten minutes of advertisements, four to six minutes fewer than other hour-long programs. Fox stated that shorter commercial breaks keep viewers more engaged and improve brand recall for advertisers, as well as reducing channel surfing and fast-forwarding past the advertisements. However, the strategy was not as successful as the network had hoped and it is unclear whether it will be continued in the future.In May 2018, Fox Networks Group said its channels would try one-minute commercial breaks, mainly during sports events, but also on some shows on Fox Broadcasting Company. Ads during these breaks would cost more and fewer advertisers would be willing to pay that much. Also in 2018, NBC used one-minute commercial breaks after the first block in multiple shows. These "prime pods" are intended to keep viewers who are watching live, and advertisers pay more for the NBC spots.