It’s my favorite time of the year, as the weather is getting warmer and the National Hockey League playoffs are well under way. While catching some fresh air in between games, I’ve been glued to the TV for 3-hour stretches as exciting games have been conducted.
Typically the TV timeout format for hockey games runs like this: a break before the 10 minute mark of the period as close to it as possible, followed by another two breaks after that in similar fashion. Each intermission is 15 minutes long, with about 4 breaks for commercials breaking up analysis. This pans out to be 21 commercial breaks over the course of 2.5 – 3 hours. Of these 21 commercial breaks it seems as if the same 4-5 commercials are played every, single, time. Not only is this the case for one game, or one day, but also for the full month and a half the playoffs have and will run.
Who is to blame for this overexposure of the same TV ads: is it the advertisers or the television station?
The Advertiser
Honing in on a specific demographic and getting your message to the select group you want is obviously the end goal in mind for all advertisers. In this specific case, Progressive with “Flo”, Discover with “Peggy”, and Verizon with NHL Gamecenter have been able to achieve this. These advertisements do a good job of ingraining in the viewer’s mind what the product is and why to use it. The repetition of names and services are in each commercial. However, the constant repetition along with seeing the commercial roughly 15-18 times in a 3-hour period starts to have a negative effect on the viewer. Personally, when I see any of these commercials come on now, I hit the mute button for the full break, eliminating any chance of my receiving the message.
The Television Station
It’s understood that a TV station or network’s objective is to fill airtime with advertisers who have the money to spend. Unfortunately, there comes a point where viewers get so fed up by seeing the same ad running repetitively, that they go even further than muting the television by changing the channel. This affects ratings for the station, as the viewer might not flip back in time for the program they want, if even at all. If the advertiser wants its ad to continue to run as often as it does, then the station has no choice but to agree to the contract and run as ordered.
As a viewer, I would greatly appreciate it if there were an effort by advertisers and TV stations to create a more spaced out schedule of ads. It’s a lose-lose for advertisers and stations alike, as more consumers become overexposed to the same messages multiple times in a short time span and develop negative feelings for the products at hand. As an advertiser, I hate to see so much money wasted.
I think there should a long, ambient break, between commercial breaks in a game. What I mean by this is the other night I was watching a basketball game, not hockey sorry, and for the most part, when a commercial break appeared, I would mute the break and turn some music on via my computer. I was on a music blog website, called hypem.com, and it has new music from new and well-known artists. I think if a website like that bought up a few ad spaces between breaks and could play one song during the break. Thats one idea. But advertisers need to not saturate a young demographic, they should think about things we like, like music/art, and expand off of that.