Often put on various Cat TV channels from YouTube on before leaving for work. They are usually like 8 hour long shots of birds and squirrels eating nuts someone left on log, the cats love it and will watch diligently. They are monetized channels often enough, and its just funny to me knowing that every once in a while the cats, who are otherwise alone in the house, are being treated to a commercial for some sports betting service, or for profit college experience. This entire edifice of targeted ads being directed to two cats who suddenly experience a very human moment in this absurd context. Can't help but feel like they sense it, that they are suddenly interpolated into this thing, subjects to the streams of money and incentived attention. brought down into our inferior world of commodities and money. Have been close to getting the premium YouTube just for their sake, and of course for the sake of the nice people making the videos.
It is always funny to see how watching TV can be so differently culturally. With my Spanish in-law family the TV is on almost the whole day in the background, even during big family dinners as background sound. With often news, sports or game shows. With their late dinner times of 9pm they often watch series and movies even later.
And here in the Netherlands it is with many a sin to have the TV on in the background if there are visitors and should only be on if you watch something together.
Some TVs now come with a camera, brace for a camera-based presence detection API to show up in web standards and TV operating systems.<p><a href="https://electronics.sony.com/tv-video/televisions/all-tvs/p/xr55a95k" rel="nofollow">https://electronics.sony.com/tv-video/televisions/all-tvs/p/...</a><p><a href="https://electronics.sony.com/tv-video/televisions/television-accessories/p/cmubc1" rel="nofollow">https://electronics.sony.com/tv-video/televisions/television...</a>
I am always amazed, amongst the shrinking group of people who still watch broadcast TV, how many of them don't reflexively hit Mute when the ads come on.<p>I've done it my entire life.
Ads, in whatever medium, are fundamentally bad UX. Not to mention utterly without value and a waste of precious human attention.<p>It is always breathtaking to consider how much has been built on the back of advertising, I guess because there is no better option.<p>But always remember that it is fundamentally bad UX: content providers forcing consumers to do something unpleasant, that they would rather not do, in exchange for the content.<p>Nobel Peace Prize to the person or organization who figures out the business model to take us beyond this absurd paradigm.
I often sit through ads when watching sports on TV because I can’t be bothered to reach for the remote to mute it. However, when I watch YouTube on my phone, I instantly mute the device and look away as soon as an ad plays. After a few seconds I look back at the device so I can hit the skip button. It always seems like a waste of bandwidth for them to play ads to me, but I assume my behavior isn’t in the majority.
I'm surprised that streaming boxes don't pause the stream when no one is looking, so the consumer has to watch the ads to continue play. This could be marketed as a feature.
Considering how technology develops, I could very well see a future where we are forced to watch/acknowledge ads before the actual content continues.<p>I think there was a movie with something like that, if the guy closed his eyes, the ad would pause and wait until he looked again.<p>I hope I am too cynical...
I rarely watch broadcast TV.<p>I mainly watch streaming content with no ads. Whenever I do watch something over regular channel ( ex. my wife wanting to watch something thats not streamed ) the ads disgust me and the interruptions are super annoying, it just reminds me why i dont watch broadcast tv anymore and re-inforces my behavior.
TV ads? What are those? Joking aside, I literally don't remember how many years it's been since I last saw a TV ad (and it's not for not watching TV).
The greatest invention on a television surely has to be the mute button on the infrared remote control. When commercials are muted then you realize how stupid they generally are and how they think people are idiots.
<p><pre><code> For this research, the co-authors worked with TVision
Insights, a TV performance metrics company that
developed innovative technology to passively monitor
who’s in the room and whether they’re actually looking
at what’s on the TV screen,
while respecting viewer privacy.
</code></pre>
Sure... the whole setup is very privacy respecting.<p>"Research" like this makes me wonder how the subject of economics ever entered the halls of academe. While writing this I'm wondering if the Frankfurt school of thought or Chomsky might have explained this actually already.
I think this is common knowledge. Its always puzzled me why advertisers expect the unbelievably detailed metrics and proof of effectiveness for online ads and only want to pay pennies. Yet they are happy to toss millions into the void for TV advertisements. I guess since there is no way to know if the ads work its just "we've always done it that way.
So according to a statistics website, on Google, says the television industry is going to profit 80+ billions dollars but Cornell says the ads play to mostly empty rooms.<p>It should be.. A 1/3 of ads played for TVision's audience plays to an empty room.
A lot of this is due to many services doing autoplay with no way to turn it off (YouTubeTV, ESPN+ on Roku, etc). There's a utility to autoplay for the consumer when they are binge watching a particular series. But when autoplay is picking random other shows to "simulate linear TV" then really its the service scamming advertisers taking advantage of this playing ads to an empty room effect just to get more impressions. I don't understand how advertisers don't bust them for it.
I'm waiting for an AI or collaborative system to turn off the sound/screen whenever ads are playing.<p>Something like Shazam, but for ads, and with on/off control over my TV.
So what? 99% of print ads go to trashcans unread. That's factored in by everyone buying those as well.<p>If anything the numbers should be "better" for TV these days: As when I was a kid, ad breaks were toilet and toothbrush breaks and I barely watched through any of them. These days modern midrolls are designed to be too short for that, but just long enough to be bearable.
Tangentially related - there’s a certain sublimity to watching cable tv commercials in 2022. I’m completely converted to streaming, so the only time I see tv commercials is at my parents house. And in that context, I find myself enjoying them? Perhaps it’s nostalgia - they remind me of media when I was growing up. There’s also an element of escapism. Everybody in commercials is beautiful and happy. And then there’s the hyper capitalism Alice-in-wonderland spectacle of it all. Commercials are strange and ridiculous. I enjoy the absurdity of it.<p>I don’t miss cable television commercials. But they provide a unique lens into how strange it is to be a person at all.
I mean, with broadcast TV, ads play regardless, and they play to everyone - to receivers that aren’t even turned on, or are tuned to a different channel. That seems little different to having the ad make it through but only to a TV in an empty room to me.
> tracked ad viewership using tools that, instead of just monitoring the television, measured actual viewer presence in the room, and focal attention on the screen<p>What are these tools and how do they measure?
I love the commercials on Japanese TV. They are art. Visually captivating, well-produced, and and also often feature famous actors or other celebrities.
Yes, but compare that with the two-thirds TV content that is empty.<p>If the commercials were of better quality (script, directing and so on), the problem would solve itself.
I don't think I watch anything that even has TV ads anymore. Live sports probably are the only thing.<p>Netflix<p>Plex<p>Prime<p>Disney Plus<p>YouTube (I guess they have ads but not the same)<p>Mobile game ads on the other hand... Urgh.
I think the advertising industry is well on its way to obsolescence in many ways. I pay zero attention to TV or YouTube commercials (I either skip them or am not watching linear TV in most of the time), adblock everything, and just look for something more interesting the moment I come across an ad.<p>(and I seldom go back to anything, site, app or TV channel, that doesn't let me skip ads.)<p>Then again I'm not in the US and am not a football fan (which I suspect is one of the drivers behind the timing of this article), but I believe we now have, worldwide, two entire generations of people who mentally blank out any form of advertising they come across. It just doesn't register unless it's fun or goes viral, and even then people recognize it for the outright manipulation that it really is.<p>I can't wait for that bubble to burst.
I wonder always whether the ad buyers genuinely believe that someone is up there to watch an ad, or actually even with extremely low return ratio per money spent they still manage to get measurable more sales in return.<p>Maybe few times in my life I was remotely considering buying something because of an ad, while 99,99% of them make me switch channels, or mute the TV/radio until they end. I'm ad blind on social media, not to mention I use ad-blockers wherever I can.<p>To me it's like buying thin air, and how this market is able to get serious companies spent millions on it is beyond me.