New Type of Ads Trick Viewers, Help Circumvent DVRs

Advertisers are using a new technique to trick DVR users and people who mute TV ads into watching their ads. The new ads, called "interstitial ads," "podbusters" or "DVR busters," are designed to look and feel just like the shows viewers are watching. They often feature the same actors, in character, and may use brief, insipid out-takes from the real show to lure unsuspecting viewers into watching them. Advertisers run podbusters late in the show, around the time that cliffhanger-endings are keeping viewers on the edge of their seats. Examples of DVR busters include Tina Fey starring in an ad for American Express during her show, 30 Rock, and commercials seen near the end AMC's Mad Men that feature actors from the show in an office environment and wearing 60's fashions, to make people think the show has started again. By the time people realize they are really watching an ad and not the show, the commercial is almost over.  Mike Rosen, an executive with a media agency, explains that ads that mimic shows viewers really like help transfer the positive feelings people have about those shows to the products being advertised on them.

Comments

I haven't even got a DVR yet and have to suffer--when I am not watching the BBC which has no ads--the disgustingly may advert breaks which I see as an assault on the psyche by a very gross mindset.

But I want to ask----HOW do we stop their latest plloy to slip ads in?

All humans are sensitive to manipulation. I predict the continuing demise of ad effectiveness.

If I was tricked by the show's own producers into watching one of these advertisements, I'd be MAD at them (probably more than at the advertiser) and would stop tuning in to watch the show! If you don't stop watching, you're part of the problem!

Currently, any advertisement for a tie-in product within the show is considered a violation of the FCC rules and is considered a "program length commercial" by their standards, putting the station at risk of paying large fines for violations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infomercial#Children.27s_programming