Blogcritics: Comments on "Real" Web TV

Comment by JR

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 11:59:59 EST

The new ad technology, from Unicast, an advertising company based in New York, invisibly loads the commercial while unwitting users read a Web page, then displays the ad across the entire browser area when users click to a new page. Fuck. That. At some point I'm just going to give up the internet. I lived without it before, I can do so again.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 11:47:45 EST

I agree with all of that - I suppose you could have Google Adwords-type advertising that included video commercials, but you would have to choose to click on them - that's the real problem here: no choice.

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 11:40:44 EST

I agree, so keep the teevee advertising on the shrinking free Network broadcast teevee. Bringing broadcast teevee advertising to the net is totally wrong. It's irrelvant, it is ignorant, and it won't work. Advertising on the net needs to be relevant and serve my needs and demands. This is why Google Ad Words are about the only success in advertising on the web, in large part because it was developed by net people, not advertising people.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 11:17:20 EST

But there will always be a demand for free TV and advertising is the only way to pay for it, one way or another.

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 11:12:22 EST

Teevee doesn't need advertising. Network broadcast teevee needs advertising, and the audience doesn't want it. HBO doesn't have advertising during the programmes, BBC doesn't have advertising during the programmes, DVD's don't have advertising during the programmes. Tivo allows you to cut out the ads. Putting teevee ads online is just negative conditioning, training the network to avoid those sites. Or make better advertising, however, the net is not teevee. People are willing to pay for quality if it is made available.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 08:02:54 EST

The only problem is without advertising we would have to find a completely different model for television (we already have PBS, no room for more of that) and for the Internet. You don't want to pay for content? - and I sure as hell don't - then you need advertising. I just don't like the intrusive nature of this thing.

Comment by jadester

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 06:53:56 EST

that is classic Bill Hicks through and through. The whole audience laughed as well...

Comment by TDavid

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 03:43:01 EST

This kind of stuff will make RSS feeds even more attractive ;)

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:01:21 EST

Obviously a whole bunch of people in advertising missed the Cluetrain again. It's bad enough that these morons are destroying email as a useful communication tool. I have one prediction, this will fail because there is a reason why people are turning to the internet and Tivo instead of watching teevee, they don't want to watch your stupid fucking commercials wrapped around insulting, worthless programmes you bunch of arseholes! Put teevee commercials on your web site and I guarantee people will stop going to your site. However, I think Bill Hicks said it best when he said:

[Bill Hicks]: By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root, I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. "There's gonna be a joke coming..." There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself.

Comment by jadester

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:40:23 EST

"....The new ad technology, from Unicast, an advertising company based in New York, invisibly loads the commercial while unwitting users read a Web page, then displays the ad across the entire browser area when users click to a new page." this bit, i suspect, is a load of bollocks, in that this kind of technology for standard internet ads (i.e. non-video, although animations have done it) has been around for at least a couple of years. I seriously doubt they've completely re-invented it, they'll just have tweaked something to do with the video to allow high-quality video to be played without too much slowdown. if they haven't even done that, then it's all just a lie, it's not new at all.