Dear Lowdown:
How do people determine which commercials will play during certain television shows?
-Caroline D’Andrea (Chicago)
Dear Lowdown:
TV takes up to four hours of Americans day. Specifically placed commercials run throughout television programs and are so ingrained in our mentally of watchings TV that commercials have become a big part of our culture. Basically a commercial is chosen to be placed in a time spot when a company or organization backing the advertisement has paid the highest price for that specific spot. Commercial spots are not cheap, with the famous Super Bowl commercials running up to 2.6 million dollars for 30 seconds on air! But not all companies are looking to play their commercials during the Super Bowl; companies carefully decide when would be an appropriate time for their commercial to show.
Hired commercial committees, otherwise known as advertising agencies have to plan where to place the commercials based on the demographics and interest of the people watching the television show playing. Careful research is done to find a focus target audience. A woman’s deorderant advertisement would not be played during a football game because the audience of women is not large enough for the commercial to produce a profit. It would be more appropriate to place the commercial like this during a drama where there would be a much larger number of women viewers and the advertisement would reach more of its target audience. This example of how gender is used to determine commercial time is just one factor that will play into this process. Another factor in placing commercial s is the interest of the audience. During sports games, commercials will play for team apparel, sport video games, and sports drinks. As you can see all these commercials are centered on the audience’s interest, based on the fact that they are already expressing interest in sports by watching the game in the first place. You are watching the Bears game in the fourth quarter and there is a time out, you can’t get up or change the channel in fear of the game coming back on, so what do you do but sit and endure through the commercials. Advertisers are smart and cunning; they catch us at our weakest points when we just cannot change the channel from our favorite show.
Advertising agencies do much more research that will aid in finding many different factors like gender and interests that ultimately help get the product to the target audience. Once they get the product to us, all they can hope is that we are stuck on the couch and have a willing wallet.
Age is also a big factor in the type of commercials played during certain programs. Younger children soak in so much information from television that it is sometimes difficult for them to tell the difference between the program and commercials. All of the information is absorbed together and they are not able to identify advertising ploys and end up falling for the product. Educational television and children programs slyly slip in commercials that advertise toys, activities, and items that catch unaware children. Then they will go straight to mom and dad for the new Wii video game that they just must have. Then they will complain and complain until the parents will give in and buy it for them. It would not make sense for there to be advertisements for a Kindle during Sesame Street since no kid is going to beg their parents for an electronic book with no pictures. Advertisers are smart and once again catch us unexpectedly.
Companies also look into the amount of people viewing the television programs to decide when the place their advertisement. Prime time spots, between 6pm and 8pm, are the most coveted spots of regular television because it is when most people are home after school and work and have not gone to sleep yet. This time period covers many age groups and both genders so it is more expensive to but a commercial spot at this time.
While researchers and commercialist for television look at the viewers as a whole group, internet advertisements are much more individual and personalized. It is much more difficult to have a target audience for internet advertisements because there are so many people on the internet and it is much more difficult to get data to know a specific target audience.
So instead of placing advertisements on certain websites because of a general target audience, now there are many customizations for advertisements including the ability to “like an advertisement”. This dictates future advertisements that popup for you. Google Ads used this method for a while and Hulu.com also uses this method when video advertisements are playing. This gets the consumer interacting with the advertisement and calls more attention to future advertisements because they customized it. Video advertisements catch us consumers at a weak point, when the boredom of the 1 minute online commercial has set in and we have nothing to do but press “like” or “dislike” or click on the video. How clever to save us from the boredom to the commercial by just advertising us in a round-about interactive way.
Another way that internet allows more relevant commercials to show, is through the history of a person, the internet can suggest, other websites to visit, television shows to watch, or songs to listen to. This continues to get the consumer interacting more with advertisements and more aware of the products available. It isn’t all bad for the consumer; we see exactly what we want and are only one click away from getting it.
Pop up advertisements are huge when surfing the web, annoying millions everyday. With most pop-up blockers, this can really hurt advertisers. So these advertisements are not as coveted and are usually advertising fake contests or obscure “smiley face” or avatar websites. But even with pop up advertisements, in order to get rid of the advertisement we have to close the box, in the process usually reading the advertisement. Over all, Internet advertisements are much more interactive and as a result more personalized for the consumer.
Commercials and advertisements surround every aspect of American life, and is a result of the American Dream: everyone trying to make it on their own and trying to get as much money as the can. Making money is such a huge part of our culture and lifestyle, that natural advertising is important and people do anything to get others to spend money. With commercials so numerous, advertisers need to become inventive and clever at tricking people to spend more money that so much thought is put into making and placing advertisements. Young toddlers watching television are exposed to the constant commercials that we become affected by advertising at a young age. With so much information being absorbed and confused with the actual program being watched, sometimes advertising is taken too far in our country. Many American commercial periods are much longer. Content of television shows are shrinking in length, being replaced with commercials, often containing advertisements within the show. This is a dilemma for American consumers because there is not much we can do. What can we do to defend ourselves from the shrewd advertisers that always find the perfect time to get us?
Commercials will be placed where they will get the most exposure and where the company will profit the most. Advertisements are all about making money and this is the deciding factor when people decide where to try to place their commercials. They growing amount of advertisements has resulted in a different variety and type of advertising that has become much more deceitful and showcased our culture investments in material items.
Sincerely,
Danielle Guerrero
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