Thursday Nights & If You Watch The Commercials.

In article , [email] says...

Now, does the NETWORK really care if you watch the commercials? The sponsors (i.e. the people whose products are being hawked) care, because they want you to buy their products, but I don't think that the NETWORKS care either way.

Brian

On Sun, 31 Dec 1995, Brian P. Phillips wrote:

Of course the networks care. The networks are the ones who MAKE the money off the advertising. Of course they want to keep the clients happy! The more people who watch a commercial, the more money they can charge for it.

To which jmaaron responded:

I still disagree. The networks want to be able to say to a prospective advertiser: "Neilson says we have X-millions tuned in at this time." The prospective advertiser ASSUMES that these people will all see his commercial, instead of flipping channels, getting food, or going to the bathroom. But the network could care less about the number of people watching an advertisers commercial. In fact, a network probably doesn't really care if people watch a show put out by them EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT BY WATCHING, NEILSON WILL REPORT THAT THEY'RE WATCHING AND THEY CAN USE THIS INFORMATION TO CHARGE MORE FOR ADVERTISING. They just want to make money.

Brian

In article , [email] (Brian P. Phillips) wrote:

<snip>

Wrong. Advertisers have gotten more sophisticated, as have the Nielson's. They know which of the family members gets up, or if a channel gets flipped during a commercial.

It is because of the remote control that we have the type of advertising we see today. When I was a kid, the old adage in advertising was, if it was annoying, it achieved it's goal. Make something annoying enough, and people will mention it, and remember it. We didn't have much choice. Ever since the remote became standard fare, however, the approach is to entertain, so people will *want* to watch the commercial. Think about it, what do you look forward to the most on Superbowl Sunday? The food, the drink, and the new Pepsi (or whatever) commercial(s) debuting. It is the time the entire crowd is usally the quietest, and big laughs afterward. It's amazing, actually, considering that it wasn't that long ago that commercials were despised and just a necessary evil. Pretty cool how that little device changed the entire landscape of tv advertising.

In article , [email] (Tusch) writes:

Than McDonald's must be living in the past with those stupid, retarded, annoying commercials with people singing some song about some kind of food thing. Oh yeah Charles Barkley is in one of em.

Yea, look how much a spot during the Superbowl goes for, something like .5 million per 30 seconds or something like that.

Fred

In , [email] (Brian P. Phillips) wrote:

Sure they do! The advertising rates are tied to the number of people watching. The more people that are watching, the more they can charge for the commercials.

They do care, because that's what they're selling. When they say, "20 million people will see your commercial so we want you to pay accordingly," the advertisers will ask, "How do I know that?" Advertisers have heard about VCRs and remote control channel changers, and they will push the networks to maximize the possibility that viewers will see their commercials.

As someone who used to work in the research dept. of a major media conglomerate, I can say that the networks care, at least to a degree. I used to do what they call "post-analyses," in which I'd go over the ratings for a bunch of markets, compare the figures with what we promised to deliver, and see who came out ahead. Then I'd give these figures to the sales dept. and they'd give them to the ad agency, who'd show them to the client -- and don't think that, with millions of dollars at stake, every person involved wasn't sweating a bit. I don't think either the network, the ad agency, or the client REALLY know how many people are watching -- Nielsen, or Arbitron in radio, is imperfect. But they can break down the demographic detail pretty well, and if they feel they aren't hitting the kind of audience they want, they'll pull their funds -- and at a few hundred grand per 30-second spot, that's a lot of money. Which hits the networks where they live.

What clients are after is exposure, and if you fast-forward through their ad on the VCR, you still see it. Moreover, ad agencies and clients are probably as concerned with "clutter" -- their ad gets lost in the mass of commercials -- as with channel-surfers and tape-spinners. Hell, it's all a crap shoot, but where else can you even attempt to hit 30 million people at once?

Well, I've rambled, but you get the idea.