Advertising started when some English man put a poster up on the door to a store advertising for some type of product. It was probably an ingenious idea at the time. It spread the idea of his product. It presented something to the unaware. Not a whole lot more is known about this but I'm sure his product sales went through the roof.
Now lets fast forward to the advent of the television. Programs need to get money to run their show somehow, so they use advertisements. People pay to have their products endorsed on breaks of television shows or promoted through product placement. Variety shows used to have people sing jingles of a product and game shows would have questions or the timer sponsored by a company.
Fast forward to about the year 2008. Television companies started coming out with the DVR, or digital video recorder. This made it possible for viewers to record their favorite t.v shows and save it for a later time. This also enabled them to skip commercials. By 2011 42% of households had a DVR. Compare that to the 1.2% in 2006 and you can see the drastic jump. Of the people who have these devices, only 36% still watch live television. This could be very bad.
If the percentage of people who own these dvr's continue to grow, and advertising continues to be skipped, will we still have commercials? Why should advertising companies continue to pay if their product is just going to be skipped over? If this is the case, what happens when programs lose their funding?
This idea of television going permanently off the air probably won't happen anytime soon however, advertising companies are going to get smarter. We will probably see more product placement in our actual shows, we will probably see still frames (almost like comics), and maybe even the chance of commercials not being allowed to skip. If you try to watch an episode online, you already have to watch four commercials before your show. These are impossible to skip. What if we start seeing that on our t.v? The big bucks we pay for our dvr's will eventually become worthless.
This is a scary thought but there is still hope. Advertising agency's are forced to become more creative. For now, advertisers are working hard to get you to press play during the fast forwarding and watch their commercial. Think about all the weird promotions you see when your watching the magic box. Everyone is guilty of stopping to watch the latest Geico or Etrade Baby commercial. Advertisements might actually become more entertaining.
For now we have nothing to worry about, but we will see the way we know advertising change. It has already started. So while advertising is annoying, its necessary for entertainment.
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