Television commercial
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A television commercial (often called an advert in the United Kingdom) is a form of advertising in which goods, services, organizations, ideas, etc. are promoted via the medium of television. Most commercials are produced by an outside ad agency and, and airtime is purchased from a channel or network in exchange for sponsorship of its programming.
The first television commercial aired in July, 1941, when the Bulova Watch Company paid $9 to WNBT for a commercial aired during a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies.
The vast majority of television commercials today consist of brief advertising spots, ranging in length from a few seconds to several minutes (as well as program-length infomercials). Commercials of this sort have been used to sell literally every product imaginable over the years, from household products to goods and services, to political campaigns. The effect of television commercials upon the viewing public has been so successful and so pervasive that it is considered impossible for a politician to wage a successful election campaign, in the United States, without airing a good television commercial.
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Characteristics of commercials
Many television commercials feature catchy jingles (songs or melodies) or catch-phrases that generate sustained appeal, which may remain in the minds of television viewers long after the span of the advertising campaign. Some of these ad jingles or catch-phrases may take on lives of their own, spawning gags or "riffs" that may appear in other forms of media, such as comedy movies or television variety shows, or in written media, such as magazine comics or literature. These long-lasting advertising elements may therefore be said to have taken a place in the pop culture history of the demographic to which they have appeared. One such example is the enduring phrase, "Oh no, Mrs. Burke! I thought you were Dale!", from the 1968 through 1970 Post Grape-Nuts cereal advertisements. Variations of this catchy dialogue and direct references to it appeared in other media forms even as long as two decades after the ad campaign expired. Another is, "Where's the Beef?", which grew so popular that it was used in the 1984 presidential election by Walter Mondale. And yet another popular catch-phrase is "I've fallen and I can't get up", which still appears occasionally, more than a decade after its first use.
For catching attention of consumers, communication agencies make wide use of humour. In fact, many psychological studies tried to demonstrate the effect of humour and indicate the way to empower advertising persuasion. Image:Lasolcommercial.jpg Animation is often used in commercials. Techniques can vary from hand-drawn traditional animation to different forms of computer animation. By using animated characters, a commercial may have a certain appeal that is difficult to achieve with actors or mere product displays. For this reason, an animated commercial (or a series of such commercials) can be very long-running, several decades in many instances. A notable example is the series of commercials for Kellogg's cereals, starring Snap, Crackle and Pop. The animation is often combined with real actors.
Other long-running ad campaigns catch people by surprise, or even tricking the viewer, such as the Energizer Bunny commercial series. It started in the late 1980s as a simple comparison commercial, where a room full of battery-operated bunnies was seen pounding their drums, all slowing down...except one, with the Energizer battery. Years later, a revised version of this seminal commercial had the Energizer bunny escaping the stage and moving on (according to the announcer, he "keeps going and going and going..."). This was followed by what appeared to be another commercial--viewers were oblivious to the fact that the following "commercial" was actually a parody of other well-known commercials until the Energizer bunny suddenly intrudes on the situation, with the announcer saying "Still going..." (the Energizer Battery Company's way of emphasizing that their battery lasts longer than other leading batteries). This subliminal (but effective) ad campaign lasted for nearly fifteen years, and was obviously shown at random times on television, often in the least-watched time periods. The Energizer Bunny series has itself been imitated by others, via a Coors Light Beer commercial, in motion pictures, and even by current commercials by Geico Insurance.
TV commercials in the United States
Frequency and length
TV commercials appear between shows, but also interrupt the shows at intervals. This method of screening commercials is intended to capture or grab the attention of the audience, keeping the viewers focused on the television show so that they will not want to change the channel; instead, they will (hopefully) watch the commercials while waiting for the next segment of the show. This is a technique of adding suspense, especially if the break occurs at a cliffhanger moment in the show.
Entire industries exist that focus solely on the task of keeping the viewing audience interested enough to sit through commercials. The Nielsen ratings system exists as a way for stations to determine how successful their television shows are, so that they can decide what rates to charge advertisers for their commercial airtime.
Commercials take airtime away from programs. In the 1960s a typical hour-long American show would run for 51 minutes excluding commercials. Today, a similar program would only be 42 minutes long; a typical 30-minute block of time includes 22 minutes of programming with 6 minutes of national advertising and 2 minutes of local (although some half-hour blocks may have as much as 12 minutes of commercials).
In other words, over the course of 10 hours, American viewers will see approximately an hour and a half more commercials than they did in the sixties. Furthermore, if that sixties show is rerun today it may be cut by 9 minutes to make room for the extra commercials.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the average length of a television commercial was one minute. As the years passed, the average length shrank to 30 seconds (and often 10 seconds, depending on the television station's purchase of ad time). However, today a majority of commercials run in 15-second increments (often known as "hooks").
Popularity
In the United States, the TV commercial is generally considered the most effective (and most annoying) mass-market advertising format, and this is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events. The annual Super Bowl football game is known as much for its commercial advertisements as for the game itself, and the average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game has reached $2.5 million (as of February 2006).
Because a single television commercial can be broadcast repeatedly over the course of weeks, months, and even years (the Tootsie Roll company has been airing a famous commercial that asks "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?" for over three decades), television commercial production studios often spend enormous sums of money in the production of one single thirty-second television spot. This vast expenditure has resulted in a number of high-quality commercials, ones which boast of the best production values, the latest in special effects technology, the most popular personalities, and the best music. A number of television commercials are so elaborately produced that they can be considered miniature sixty-second movies; indeed, many film directors have directed television commercials both as a way to gain exposure and to earn a paycheck. One of film director Ridley Scott's most famous cinematic moments was a television commercial he directed for the Macintosh computer, that aired in 1984. Even though this commercial was aired only once (aside from occasional appearances in television commercial compilation specials), it has become famous and well-known, to the point where it is considered a classic television moment.
Despite the popularity of some commercials, most are considered to be an annoyance for a number of reasons. The main reason is that the volume of commercials tends to be higher (and in some cases much higher) than that of regular programming, due to the compression rate of the commercials. The increasing number and length of commercials, as well as commercials for the same product being played back-to-back, is a secondary annoyance factor.
Are commercials also programming?
Since the 1960s, media critics have claimed that the boundaries between "programming" and "commercials" have been eroded to the point where the line is blurred nearly as much as it was during the beginnings of the medium.
In 1973 the FCC decided to define the boundary, especially for children's programming. Since pre-school and school-age children generally have a hard time telling the difference between a commercial and an actual program, the television networks (except commercial-free PBS) were required by the FCC to put explicit bumpers during periods of children's programming and the 7:00 PM/6:00 PM Central Sunday time period ("We'll return after these messages", "Now back to our program") in order for the young viewers to understand when a commercial break was beginning or ending. The only programs that were exempt from this rule were news shows and information shows relating to news (such as 60 Minutes). Conditions on children's programming have eased a bit since the period of the 1970s and 1980s.
TV commercials outside the United States
British commercial television is not quite so relentlessly geared to the needs of the advertisers and there are fewer interruptions. In addition, the British Broadcasting Corporation is funded by taxpayers and does not screen adverts. Nevertheless, on the commercial channels, the amount of airtime allowed by the Independent Television Authority and its successors for advertising has risen from 7 minutes per hour in the 1970s to 12 minutes today. With 42-minute American exports to Britain, such as Lost, being given a one hour slot, nearly one third of the slot is taken up by adverts.
In many European countries television commercials appear in longer, but less frequent advertising breaks. For example, instead of 3 minutes every 8 minutes, there might be 6 or 7 minutes every half hour. Specific regulations differ widely from country to country and network to network.
In Finland, there are two non-commercial channels run by the state owned broadcasting company YLE, that run commercials only on very infrequent occasions, such as important sports events. The three main commercial channels MTV3, SubTV (a subsidiary of MTV3), and Nelonen ("Four" in Finnish), all run their commercials during breaks approximately every 15 minutes. A typical break lasts about 4 minutes. The length of individual commercials can vary from a few seconds (7,10 and 15 are common), but nowadays they are rarely over one minute in length.
Music
Prior to the 1980s music in television commercials was generally limited to jingles and incidental music; on some occasions lyrics to a popular song would be changed to create a theme song or a jingle for a particular product. In 1971 the converse occurred when a song written for a Coca-Cola commercial was re-recorded as the pop single "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" by the New Seekers, and became a hit. Some pop and rock songs were re-recorded by cover bands for use in commercials, but the cost of licensing original recordings for this purpose remained prohibitive until the late 1980s.
The use of previously-recorded popular songs in television commercials began in earnest in 1987 when Nike used the original recording of The Beatles' song "Revolution" in an advertisement for athletic shoes. Since then, many classic popular songs have been used in similar fashion. Songs can be used to concretely illustrate a point about the product being sold (such as Bob Seger's "Like a Rock" used for Chevy trucks), but more often are simply used to associate the good feelings listeners had for the song to the product on display. In some cases the original meaning of the song can be totally irrelevant or even completely opposite to the implication of the use in advertising; for example Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life", a song about heroin use addiction, has been used to advertise a cruise ship line. Music-licensing agreements with major artists, especially those which had not previously allowed their recordings to be used for this purpose, such as Microsoft's use of "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones and Apple Computers' use of U2's "Vertigo" became a source of publicity in themselves.
In early instances, songs were often used over the objections of the original artists, who had lost control of their music publishing; more recently artists have actively solicited use of their music in advertisements and songs have gained popularity and sales after being used in commercials.
Types of TV commercials
- Political TV advertising
- Infomercials
- Product placement
- Network or local station promotional advertising (also known as promo)
- Television commercial donut
- Sponsorship
The future of TV commercials
The advent of technologies such as Personal Video Recorders has caused much speculation about the future of television commercials, since during pre-recorded programs, one can simply fast forward through commercials.
The introduction of TiVo DVRs and services such as Sky Plus, which allow the recording of TV programs onto a hard disk, also allow viewers to essentially skip advertisements. Many speculate that telvision commercials will be eliminated altogether, replaced by advertising in the TV shows themselves. For example, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition advertises Sears, Kenmore, and Home Depot by specifically using products from these companies.
Another type of commercial that is being done more and more, mostly for advertising TV shows on the same channel, is where the ad overlays the bottom of the TV screen, blocking out some of the picture. This is done in much the same way as a severe weather warning is done, only these happen a lot more often. Sometimes these take up only 5-10% of the screen, but in the extreme, can take up as much as 25% of the viewing area.
See also
External links
- How an animated TV commercial is made
- Comprehensive list of Music used in commercials
- What's That Called - database of songs used in commercials in the US
- What's That Called (UK version) - database of songs used in commercials in the UK
- What's That Tune? - Extensive database of tunes used in commercials in the UK and Irelandde:Fernsehwerbung
es:Comercial de televisión he:פרסומת בטלוויזיה ja:コマーシャル zh:廣告訊息