October 2, 2007
When I come home from work I’ll typically open the newspaper and really read it over, unlike in the morning. Typically, I have my TV turned to ABC’s World News with Charlie Gibson on at the same time and tonight I heard Charlie say this was a special edition of World News…more news, less commercials.
What a novel idea! An ABC salesperson scored enough money for today’s newscast that they didn’t need to cut away from the content nearly as much. I hope this type of trend continues because I really thought it was a fantastic theme. More news, less ads, one somewhat larger commercial break (75 seconds) and an overall sponsorship. I wonder if you’ll start seeing company logos appear near the network logo in the bottom-right corner. Maybe a perpetual leaderboard across the top with a Viagra logo pinned on it.
I’m not really sure if this kind of thing has happened before, but I hope I see more of it here and there. Of course, being an advertising guy I can understand why this type of program is limited. More ads = more money typically. Pfizer was tonight’s big sponsor, God bless ‘em. But I wonder how many people said, “Pfizer bought the whole newscast?” Did America even notice?
In the world of Internet advertising we have a similar tool at our disposal, the roadblock. Venture on to myspace.com before a new movie premiers and you’ll sometimes notice the entire homepage is taken over with ads for that particular movie. The first time I saw it on MySpace was for the opening of “300″. It definitely is an unconventional ad method but one that is becoming more and more popular. It increases your site’s advertising inventory by creating an out-of-banner position that is measured differently. They’re slick as hell, especially when streaming audio/video is included as a key component – as “300″ showed me.
Thanks Pfizer, for showing me more Charlie Gibson tonight.
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