Blocking Ads on TV

Perhaps due to a heady combination of stress and sleep deprivation, parents have very simple dreams. One of them is probably working out a way to stop their child watching that toy advert with the annoying jingle on TV for the 200th time today.

Luckily, in contemporary times technology does exist to block on-screen adverts. But the way it works, and its effects on the viewing experience, are changing the advertising landscape forever – and not necessarily in parents’ favour.

Changing The Channel

Of course, the most obvious way to stop kids viewing adverts on TV is simply to watch the box with them and change channels every time a commercial break starts. Unfortunately, this method assumes that parents have unlimited time available and have nothing better to do than watch kids’ TV. It also ignores the fact that children often enjoy adverts. Research has suggested that kids respond to adverts just as much as the programmes that they surround.

Invest In New TV Technology

For years, inventors with an eye on making their fortune have tried to develop ways to filter out adverts on ‘live’ television. For instance, in the 1990s one American inventor patented a system designed to let viewers mark offending commercials electronically. The system would then blank out those adverts the next time they appeared.

The invention failed for two reasons. Viewers would have had to watch hours of ads to decide which ones they didn’t like – and the blocked adverts were replaced by a white screen, almost as annoying as the adverts it replaced.

Today the new generation of digital hard-drives sold by satellite companies seems to have solved the problem. One feature (not widely marketed for obvious reasons) lets parents ‘zap out’ the ads for children while they’re watching the programme ‘live’. The effect is just like recording a programme on video and fast-forwarding through commercial breaks.

Why Blocking Adverts May Not Be A Good Idea

However useful this tool is to weary parents, its potential spells bad news for TV advertising revenues. Another reason that ad-blocking technology hasn’t been developed earlier is that commercial stations rely on the money generated by advertising to fund their programming content. Put bluntly, if advertisers find out viewers are simply zipping through the ads, they won’t bother advertising during commercial breaks in future.

Alternatives To Commercials

With the rise in new media to consider – as well as the way viewers were watching television online – the TV industry has already come up with several likely solutions to the potential death of the commercial break.

The first is the expansion of TV sponsorship. ‘Idents’ (basically mini adverts screened to book-end programmes before commercial breaks start) are designed specifically to stop viewers zapping through them. They’re valuable to brands buying advertising space, because they help closely associate a brand with a popular programme.

The second method is product placement. American advertisers already pay millions to let brands be written into the storylines of popular shows stateside. Once considered beyond the pale in much of Europe, falling revenue means that UK regulators may have to rethink its use.

Commercials may be irritating, but at least seasoned viewers know how to understand them. Product placement and sponsorship both help to blur the line between ‘advertising’ and ‘content’. Confusing for parents – and potentially damaging to children who don’t even understand they’re watching adverts.

With these points in mind be aware that while blocking commercial breaks altogether is tempting, alternative advertising methods in the future may be even worse!