Viewers may dislike commercial breaks, but Madison Avenue soon hopes to get them to watch ads during a very different kind of interruption.
Coca-Cola struck advertising gold in 1929 by introducing the slogan, The Pause That Refreshes. In 2019, there is new hope in a similar concept: a refreshing pause that carries a word from a sponsor. Consumers have more power these days to avoid ads that get in the way of the viewing of their favorite shows, but maybe just maybe they will show interest in commercials that come on screen during interludes of their own choosing from long streaming sessions or on-demand playback.
Imagine an ad for soda or beer that comes on the screen just as you decide to stop the action during a run of an episode of Black-ish on Hulu to go to the kitchen for a snack, or a pitch for toilet paper that begins to move in the moments before you choose to halt the video stream for a bathroom break. And yet, theres no guarantee viewers will welcome pause-vertising any more than they do the current crop of 30-second pitches.
Some outlets are willing to bet they will. As binge-viewing happens more and more, its natural they are going to want to pause, says Jeremy Helfand, vice president and head of advertising platforms for Hulu, speaking of modern-day couch potatoes. Hulu intends to unveil what it calls pause ads in 2019. When a user chooses to stretch, or get a snack, he says, its a natural break in the storytelling experience.
AT&T also has hopes to use the pause to lend new momentum to TV advertising. The company, which owns DirecTV and U-verse, expects to launch technology next year that puts a full-motion video on a screen when a user decides to take a respite. We know youre going to capture 100% viewability when they pause and unpause, says Matt Van Houten, vice president of product at Xandr Media, AT&Ts advertising division. Theres a lot of value in that experience.
Many consumers think they can escape the usual barrage of TV pitches with new streaming-video services that run only a few ads, and sometimes even none. That notion has been bolstered in recent months by efforts from companies like NBCUniversal, which has experimented with running fewer ads in primetime. But TV watchers may have to recalibrate their view. Media companies dont want to lose the billions of dollars advertisers pay them each year. And consumers would have to submit to much higher prices for access to their favorite shows if commercials didnt play some part in the overall experience. Indeed, Hulu offers its service at a higher price if customers want to avoid commercials completely.
At a September conference held for advertisers, AT&T executives made the case that even new forms of video entertainment including streaming require ad support. If we are to continue this pace of developing content of this quality in these volumes, then we need advertising to pay for some of the content,said Brian Lesser, chief executive of the companys Xandr unit, while speaking to reporters at the event. I dont believe nor does anybody on the team believe that subscription video on demand services could possibly pay for all the content being developed without relying on money from advertising.
The greed is real! ---
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