The Case for Better Commercials

Many years ago, my wife and I decided the few shows we liked to watch on television weren't worth the exorbitant cost our television service provider was charging.

So we "cut the cord".

But it wasn't a clean cut. At the time, we weren't sure if we were ready to give up television completely, so we put a high-definition antenna on our roof which, for a one-time equipment and installation charge, gave us access to over a dozen channels that broadcast most of the shows we thought we might miss by eliminating our TV service.

One morning we happened to be watching the news using our antenna. When the news program finished, a children's show began to air that my then-three-year-old daughter knew from Netflix. And rather than switch our entertainment setup from the antenna to Netflix, we just let the show continue.

We realized our mistake moments later when the first commercial break happened.

My daughter looked at me suddenly and angrily said, "Daddy, put the show back on!"

You see, my daughter had never seen a commercial before. Having been raised with Netflix, she had never had her show interrupted by a TV ad and thought I had changed the channel.

And she wasn't at all happy about it.

As a marketer, I was struck by this insight.

The largest advertisers in the world spend billions of dollars a year on television ads, and those marketing dollars would become completely ineffective when the next generation of consumers refused to tolerate any interruption in their programming.

When we moved to our current home, we didn't even bother installing a high-definition antenna; since then, we've relied exclusively on streaming services for all our in-home entertainment needs. My children all know how to access Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and, perhaps most importantly, YouTube on their various screens to watch whatever they want, whenever they want.

The media landscape has changed significantly over the past decade. And yet media companies have been glacially slow to evolve advertising and how they deliver it to us.

We're still shown three to four commercials during each commercial break.

We still have three to four commercial breaks per hour of content.

And, for the most part, we still all watch the same commercials.

The situation is slightly better if you subscribe to ad-supported streaming services instead of traditional cable television, but only slightly.

Sure, ad-supported streaming services show fewer commercials during a typical show, but they still think it's a good idea to interrupt exciting content people want to see with irrelevant content they most certainly do not. When I sat down to watch an Oscar-nominated film on Amazon Prime Video, my viewing experience was rudely interrupted, mid-scene, by a commercial for women's deodorant. This happened three times... with the same ad.

But why can't we do better?

Rather than have four commercial breaks within a one-hour show, why not reduce that to two, or even one? And instead of forcing audiences to sit through five 30-second commercials during each break, why not require them to watch a single ad?

If your answer to both questions is "Because more commercials mean more money, stupid", I'd humbly suggest you're missing the bigger picture.

By offering content strong enough to command an audience and restricting its available ad inventory, the law of Supply and Demand dictates a platform could charge a significant premium for each commercial spot. That's a win for the platform.

Fewer commercials mean fewer viewer interruptions for the audience, resulting in a better viewing experience. That's a win for the consumer.

And because consumers aren't subjected to multiple ads in a row, space becomes less cluttered and the advertising is more likely to be recalled. That's a win for the advertiser.

There's only one thing that should surprise you about any of this, and that's the fact that we're still talking about this today: I wrote an eerily similar post to this one back in 2016.

And yet, even though the media industry has had almost a decade to evolve the way it serves ads to consumers, very little has changed.

We need better commercials and a better to deliver them to consumers.

And the sooner the industry decides to start truly innovating in this regard, but showing us more relevant advertising in a less intrusive way, the better off we'll all be.

Because my "then-three-year-old" daughter started high school this year.

And she still refuses to watch traditional ads.