Comments on: The decline of the ad-break

By: Sim-O

Sim-O — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:53:32 +0000

As Clarice points out, most people do not have sky+, the cheaper version, is a Freeview receiver with a HDD. But ultimatley, both of these systems only do what video recorders have been doing for 25ish years. Record programmes.
With a VCR, did you sit and watch the adverts or did you FF through them?

By: Clarice

Clarice — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:39:49 +0000

Well now. I do not think that most people have Sky+. So therefore most people, and especially people whose parents are digital immigrants, and perhaps trying to raise children while working in a busy job, will probably still find themselves exposed to quite a lot of tv advertising, unless they watch only the BBC.

The connundrum is that advertising anything to children is deeply unethical. Ideally, you’d have a technology evolving much like parental controls on internet accounts, whereby if a child is watching the tv, then the ads don’t get shown. The rather obvious problem with this, to me only highlights the dubiosity of non-consensual advertising per se.

If advertising didn’t work, then no-one would bother doing it. The fact that it does work, tells me that large numbers of people are susceptible to the messages that it spreads. So advertising at all is tantamount to manipulating and exploiting people. Well dodgy if you ask me. Should only ever be opt-in.

By: DE

DE — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:24:36 +0000

There are a lot of car ads during trailers at the cinema.

Incidentally, British made childrens TV programmes are suffering because of lack of money. Wait a moment..