It is hard to escape advertising for the new autumn (or fall, as I suppose I should call it) season on the US television networks in New York at the moment. The networks are making it impossible to do so.

As a piece in the New York Times this morning detailed, television networks are increasingly filling the bottom of the screen during programmes with little trailers for others that are coming up. It looks a bit bizarre to have little figures moving around the bottom of the screen while you are trying to watch the action at the top.

But these so-called "snipes" are not the end of it. Reading the New York Times itself in print form this morning was a bit of a labour because NBC had put wraparound inserts for its new autumn programmes on each section of the paper.

All of this is irritating. On the other hand, I have to sympathise with advertisers in the current climate. The digital video recorder has made it easier to avoid watching standard 30-second slots on television and software allows you to block out most banner ads on the internet.

Given that an increasing amount of media content has to be paid for by advertising (since nobody wants to pay subscriptions on the internet), media organisations sadly have to find some way to get people at least to watch their ads.

There is no such thing as a free lunch (or episode of Law and Order).

September 24th, 2007 in Advertising | Permalink