Since moving to San Francisco, I started watching my favorites shows on the networks sites instead of downloading them.
You can find today almost every series you want on the web just a couple of days or even hours after it ran on TV.
I started with Fox Prison Break. One of the things that I really liked is the Toyota ads the Fox put there. There were just about four of them each episode, each one in the length of five seconds.
This was a great way to do video ads. As Toyota was the only one to appear on each episode,it got me to remember their brand, and in the same time to get a good user experience.
But unfortunately this good user experience was long gone.
In the last couple of weeks, every major network (NBC, Fox, ABC...) started to put 5 - 6 commercials break in online videos. Each break in the length of 30 seconds.
I will argue that this is not just a bed thing for the users, but also bad for the advertisers.
If I looked at Toyota kindly for their 5 seconds ads, at the fourth time I had to watch the same ad in a Heroes episode, I actually started to hate the ad and the company behind it.
Users are used to not have ads at all. Trying to mimic the TV experience on the web don't get the same reaction. On TV, people are used to commercials. People are used to go to the kitchen and make a sandwich (or to buy Tivo and skip the ads). we are not used to do the same on the web and we don't want to get used to that.
By The way - I would also have to wonder how come all the networks started to do exactly the same at exactly the same time? Aren't any laws against this?
