In May of this year, amid much hoop-la, Fox unveiled 'Remote-Free TV', a 'paradigm-shift' in TV advertising, according to Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly.
What this meant in practice is that in two of its big Autumn launches, JJ Abrams' Fringe and Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, would have restrictions placed on ad minutage, airing about half the number of ads that would normally appear.
Whilst perhaps not quite the 'paradigm shift' you may have been expecting, it was, nonetheless, a brave move. In a highly commoditised market, cutting minutage and charging a premium of around 35-40% was clearly a risk. Just ask GCap.
Well, Fringe debuted in the US last month (and is currently showing over here on Sky). And it appears, at least initially, to have been successful. As you'd expect there were some tough negotiations, but they managed to get through higher CPT increases. Perhaps more importantly initial research findings seem to be pointing to increased audience engagement with both the show and, most importantly for us, with the advertising.
So, 92% of viewers stayed with the programme through the commercial breaks, compared to the ususal 87%. More impressive are some of the early tracking stats. Ad attention is up 31%, likeability up 61% and unaided recall up a whopping 250%.
It looks, then, as if Fox could be onto something with this approach. I think it makes more sense on TV than on radio as active channel hopping is much more prevalent (as the marvellous ad from the 1950's above illustrates nicely). But before we get too carried away, a couple of words of caution.
First, whilst it is undoubtedly refreshing for viewers to only have ad breaks of, on average, 1 minute 18 seconds (against 3m 16s on the rest of the network), let's remember refreshment doesn't last. At the moment this is the exception not the rule. They've used some nice tactics such as flagging up the length of the break ('Fringe will return in 70 seconds...') but if this approach becomes more widespread, viewers will simply recalibrate their expectations. This will only lead to more downward pressure on ad break length, thereby destroying the advantages both viewers and advertisers get.
Secondly, I think there's a real danger that we're falling into the classic media agency 'numbers only' approach. There could be something more obvious at play here. Here's a rundown of the ads that appeared in Fringe.
They sound pretty good to me. Maybe even the sort of ads that people wouldn't mind watching. It seems almost embarassing to have to say it, but I'm going to - Let's not forget the impact of the creative work. And let's hope that these impressive sounding early numbers don't get destroyed by people piling in with dreadful ads.
Perhaps agencies could even club together and buy whole breaks of 'good' ads?
That really would be a paradigm shift.
-- Toby
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