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Only 13 commercials?
I've counted 27.
Alot of 30 minute shows have show for 18 minutes and commercials for 12.
Indeed. Those of us who are older can attest that it absolutely didn't used to be that way. When I watched TV as a kid in the 80s, there were maybe two commercial breaks that interrupted the show. You can see this on some reruns on Youtube, like Golden Girls, where the picture fades to black a couple times - that's where the commercial breaks were. As kids we used to race to get a snack or drink or use the bathroom, hurrying to make it back before the commercials ended, that's how brief they were.
If we're calling the 80s the "good old days" now, then fifty years from now people will be calling the 2020s the "good old days", when at least you could watch segments of a show without interruptions. I don't think it'll be long before watching TV looks like this:
I like to think I'm not influenced by commercials I see (I'm skeptical of any claims I hear -- makes me think of the old time "Snake Oil Salesman" selling medical cures). I imagine though that I am more influenced my commercials than I realize. If buying something I haven't bought before that's a small item that I'm not spending the time to research, I might pick up a brand that I have heard of before vs. one I haven't unless there is a store brand with the same ingredient or something like that. I know I do this. Name / brank recognition seems to be a really big deal in advertising because it works in getting people to buy the product.
I do a lot of recording of shows and fast forwarding on commercials. That doesn't completely avoid seeing them though. What's really disgusting lol is when I have songs about certain drugs being marketed for diseases I don't even have and am singing the songs in my head.
Honestly, I think most advertisers have shot themselves in the foot. The more ads they pile on us, the more we adapt to ignoring them. I can go on to a a site like MSN.com and completely bypass and ignore all the ads the have on there. After years of exposures to ads, none of them even catch my eye anymore.
I imagine the same is true of television (I haven't had a TV since 2008). Now that the ads are 7 minutes long, people take that time to use the bathroom, get a drink, or grab a snack. I was on a TV site on the computer the other day and their ads were so short, I got annoyed. I'd mute them intending to play a game of Solitaire on the computer and 5 seconds later, the show would come back on and my game wasn't even downloaded yet!
If I don't watch ads, I also don't listen to them. I totally space out on them and if one is particularly long or obnoxious, I mute them. I'm not so annoyed at ads as I can't believe people actually watch them or worse yet, respond to them. And I'm in awe of how stupid any advertiser is to think anyone will buy their product just because they've shoved it in our faces. I wish I could tell them how stupid they are. As in, the more they push, the more I ignore them.
Extensive academic research over the decades shows that the people who pay the most attention to automobile advertising are people who have already purchased an automobile in the recent past. This is true for TV commercials and print advertising as well.
Well, A and B. A: We are reinforced to buy the same kind of car again when that time comes. B: BUT........Subarus do rather last forever, so-o..........
Location: When things get hot they expand. Im not fat. Im hot.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sand&Salt
I only see commercials when we are traveling as we only have Netflix and a free streaming service at home. So here in SoCal, we are just appalled at all the commercials at our rental. To distract ourselves, we count them: usually about 13 commercials, then 5 minutes of content. It's unbelievable.
But it led me to wonder just how much people buy from commercials. Obviously it works, or there wouldn't be all this money spent on it. I thought long and hard about our purchases, and I honestly can't think of a single thing we bought in our lives due to a commercial. But we must be unusual.
We just mute them and even look at something else, they are so annoying. In fact, I am so turned off by commercials, I won't buy that product. And the pharm products! Good grief, are you going to diagnose yourself, pick your own meds? Most of the ad time is spent on side effects!
Since retirement age people are new to "influencers", I thought our take on commercials might be unique.
What have you bought because "you saw it on TV"?
I like commercials. Thats when I go to the Loo. Im old I have to pee every 15 minutes.
Or sometimes I need a snack or a cuppa tea.
Seriously. If I see something interesting, I might check it out but Im not influenced by commercials. My Mom on the other hand was fascinated by those newfangled gadgets. She bought one for her and..... one for me. You name it we had it. And I inherited all of hers when she passed away.
Yes, commercials always influence me, inversely. The commercials always SCREAM at me. I hate that. I don't have standard cable, just Roku, and whatever I can get through Roku.
The products buy time on tv in order to stick their products in my face. The scumbags in the Marketing Dept. and the sound-mixing studio DELIBERATELY record the ads at scream-level. It is an assault on my senses and my privacy. So, I NEVER go looking for the stuff featured in the fart-brained commercials.
Interesting aspect of this question is the definition of "commercial". Most associate commercials and refuse to be held captive to someone who wants to sell me something. That includes the radio. I have Sirius XM and gladly pay a fee to avoid commercials. I hate them.
But.
Ads come up on my FB all the time. To me it's a much less aggressive form of advertising and I feel more in control. If something catches my eye, I Google it to look at reviews and descriptions and sometimes I buy, sometimes I don't. If it's the former I go to Amazon to make the purchase. Returning is easy if it becomes necessary. It's easier to avoid bogus websites too that way. Bought a really cheap, too-good-to-be-true-pair of Birkenstocks directly from the advertiser. Lesson learned.
Are ads on FB the same as a commercial? You decide... Lol.
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