leno to air live commercial, fuck you, tivo Options

[GOB]

long article, so in summary: NBC is going to air a live Garmin commercial tomorrow.

good concept, but people can still skip it along with the others. the only thing that will combat the skipping ability of a DVR is if the host actually plugs the product between sketches/guests or if they have ad-signs hanging on the set.

NBC Hopes Live Spot Puts Life Into Ads
Commercial for Garmin
During 'Tonight Show'
Fights Digital Recorders
By SUZANNE VRANICA
June 8, 2007; Page B3

To fight the challenge posed by TiVo, NBC is borrowing a tactic from television's early days -- live commercials.

Tuesday's broadcast of "The Tonight Show" will air a live skit promoting car satellite-navigation devices made by Garmin International. The skit will air immediately before the show goes to commercial break. There, the message will be reinforced with a taped spot for Garmin taking the first slot in the break.

Live TV ads were standard in the 1950s, when most shows aired live and the advertising message would often be delivered by the star of a program. But live-to-air spots fell out of favor over time; "The Tonight Show" last ran a live spot in 1995. NBC's decision to try the live Garmin spot comes as networks are casting about for ways to keep viewers watching commercials, in a time when digital video recorders such as TiVo allow viewers to speed through ads while watching a program they've recorded earlier.

For "Tonight Show" viewers, Garmin's ad will be hard to miss. The skit will appear shortly before the show is due to go to its second commercial break, and "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno will toss to the commercial. At that point, Mr. Leno's announcer, John Melendez, will don a lab coat -- with Garmin's logo on it -- and mock-seriously discuss the perils of "Direction Disorder" -- men's reluctance to ask for directions, according to the script for the ad.

As Mr. Melendez explains the disorder, a large video screen in the background will show a man in a car asking gas-station attendants for directions. The attendants point in opposite directions and laugh, leaving the driver "looking helplessly at the camera." At the end of the skit, Mr. Melendez will announce: "But now there's a cure," as the video screen reveals the logo for a Garmin device.

"For us, it was just a way to TiVo-proof our advertising," says Ted Gartner, media relations manager at Garmin International.

Pressure on networks to deal with TiVo and similar devices -- now in 17% of U.S. homes, according to Nielsen Media Research -- has ratcheted up in the past several months. Nielsen last month began releasing ratings measuring the viewership of commercial breaks, as opposed to the programs. While marketers have long worried about people skipping their ads, Nielsen's new ratings are providing hard evidence of just how much DVRs reduce viewing of their ads.

Nielsen's introduction of "commercial" ratings has helped delay "upfront" negotiations for next season's ad time between networks and advertisers, which usually start after the networks present their schedules to advertisers in May. This year, the negotiations have been slow to gain traction. Some media buyers expect the deal-making to pick up steam in the next few days, however.

The Garmin deal "obviously is a reaction to the DVR issue and a reaction to commercial ratings," says Marianne Gambelli, executive vice president, sales and marketing, for NBC Universal. Marketers are increasingly looking for these types of ad deals, she adds.

Garmin hopes to magnify its message by twinning the live spot with the conventional ad in the commercial break. In the past, when NBC has integrated a product into the story line of a show and given the marketer the first ad slot in the commercial break, research has shown advertising recall jumps by "40% to 50%," Ms. Gambelli says.

NBC says it's looking to expand use of the live commercials during late-night TV and sees the Garmin ad as a test. Not that they'll appear a lot. "You want to keep it unique," Ms. Gambelli notes.

In recent months, other networks have tried an array of other gimmicks to keep viewers watching through commercial breaks, including adding quizzes and short videos.

"We have killed and mauled the golden goose of commercial breaks," says TV historian and author Tim Brooks. "For a long time, the audience has put up with it, but now they have the ability to dodge commercial breaks, so networks can't get away with it any more."

source: wsj.com