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Will
pop-up ads (that bane of web-users) soon irritate TV viewers?
Recent
Developments
The first version of intruding ads was the commercial text crawls.
The technology was first introduced for news crawls - to announce
'breaking news'. Next it was for 'announcements' and soon after
for commercial messages.
The
local cable operator inserted his own commercial crawlers. And later
upgraded these to fixed size panels with limited animation effects,
which not only distracted the viewer, but also blocked a significant
part of his screen.
A
few months ago, TNT Movie Channel ran a game at the bottom of the
TV screen. This was sponsored by a large coporate house. And more
recently, the same TNT channel popped up an ad in the middle of
a movie, selecting a moment which was 'related' to the product.
The
Future
Television viewing is on the rise, world-wide. Also on the rise
is the number of TV sets per household. And the size of the average
TV screen is definitely increasing. In fact, TV sets are expected
to become communication 'hubs' of the household in the near future.
Read: SMS & Interactive TV
Print & Television)
The
advertiser meanwhile, will continue to be obsessed with grabbing
the viewer's attention.
As for technological developments, the most apt description is 'break-neck
speed' !
(Of course, all technological developments are not necessarily in
the advertisers' favour - take PVRs - the current favourites of
viewers which actually facilitate skipping of commercials.)
The
pundits predict (surprisingly, with a dash of common sense), that
pop up ads will result in a set of annoyed viewers!
But
there is some logic behind the broadcasters' anticipated success
of pop-up ads
* pop up ads will adopt a 'complementary approach' to the main content
- this will result in :-
*
appropriate placement: ads will be placed at a 'non-critical' points,
resulting in minimal irritation
*
content-sensitive
design: ads will be designed to take advantage of the main content
*
pop up ads will compete in quality with the main content (with clever
design) and finally
*
pop up ads may provide an immediate answer to the threat of PVRs
(automatic clipping of commercials by PVRs will be difficult as
there may be no demarcating frames)
So,
let's get prepared to be assaulted by the new genre of pop up TV
ads!
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