do commercials work? honestly, I think more people are annoyed by advertising than not, but marketing executives live in their own happy little world where everyone really needs to have their lives interrupted by a sales pitch every five-point-three seconds.
if it ever gets to the extent we saw in Minority Report, we'll have a New Jersey sniper on our hands. Me, going to Madison Avenue.
seriously. when digital TV came 'round, the first thing people did was zap all the commercials. rather than take the frickin' hint that people do not like to watch commercials, Madison Avenue is instead trying to find ways to make their commercials more entertaining so that we WON'T zap them. I don't care how amusing your commercial is, I would rather be watching Spongebob.
most TV stations nowadays start hitting you with commercial interruptions almost every ten minutes. There's more ad content than show content on most stations these days. Don't believe me? Try watching a movie all the way through on a station like TBS or USA and start timing the amount of show versus the amount of commercials. They start breaking more frequently toward the end of the film. And we PAY for this!
ironically, when people turn off the TV due to ad overload, instead of thinking "gee, maybe we're going overboard", all it causes the marketroids to do is realize "hey, we're losing revenue cause nobody's watching, better step up the ads to make up for the loss!", resulting in more people tuning out, etc.
how about banner ads? when was the last time you clicked on one? who enjoys pop-ups on their websites? can I see a show of hands? remember, spam E-mail is just really cost-effective advertising. who cares that it makes E-mail pretty much unuseable?
making the ads MORE intrusive isn't suddenly going to make everyone want to see them. But marketing people don't see that. They figure the ads just aren't in our faces enough, even though we have junk mail, telephone soliciting, and now they're hiring people to sneak pitch you on the streets and spoofing fans on the Internet (like Gabrielle's false reviews of her videos here, 'cept in person).
the final proof; why are infomercials aired at 4am? is it because nobody wants to watch them?
advertising... such hatred, have I.
*ahem*) and get away with it, they would.
