Ads that work faster than a fast-forward button  ( May '21,2007, FE)

A broadcast network will soon offer advertisers two more ways to try holding the attention of viewers throughout those commercial breaks that consumers love to hate.

One idea is to run quickie commercials of only five seconds each. The other is to schedule a series with no commercial breaks at all, and instead incorporate sponsors’ products into each episode. Executives of the network CW outlined their plans Thursday as they offered Madison Avenue a preview of their prime-time lineup for the 2007-2008 season.

The proposals are the most recent to be advanced by the major networks, broadcast and cable, as they grapple with the problem of keeping viewers from changing channels during commercials—or, if the viewing is being done on digital video recorders, from fast-forwarding through the spots.

The presentation by CW was part of what is called ‘Upfront Week’, which gets its name because the broadcasters share their programming with advertisers and agencies before the fall season begins. The Upfront Week for 2007-8 ended recently with sneak peeks at the schedules of CW, owned by the CBS Corp. and Time Warner, and Fox Broadcasting, which is part of the News Corp.

Last month, Fox tried interspersing humorous programme snippets between commercials, and executives said they would try other versions of the snippets during the 2007-08 season.

The need for the networks to “engage with viewers to stay with the commercials,” as Dawn Ostroff, president for entertainment at CW, described it, is intensifying for a couple of reasons. One is that Nielsen Media Research is about to change the way it reports the ratings data long used by advertisers to decide where to run commercials. On May 31, Nielsen is to start measuring the viewership of the commercials as well as the programmes.

The other reason to tinker with traditional commercial breaks is the DVR owners’ tendency to skip through spots when they play back recorded programmes. “This is an amazing time in the advertising industry,” said Bill Morningstar, executive vice president for sales at CW. “The business is changing as never before.”“What we need to do will not be easy,” he added, “but will be a lot of fun.”

The goal is to “connect with consumers and give them more of what they want,” Morningstar said, which is entertainment and information with fewer interruptions.

The two CW ideas are based on the network’s experience since September with a device known as a ‘Content Wrap’, which CW produced for almost 20 brands during the 2006-07 season.

In Content Wraps, products of advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Toyota Motor and Unilever are integrated into a set of three short programme segments on topics like fashion and music. The segments were interspersed in commercial breaks during episodes of series like “America’s Next Top Model.”

The five-second commercials are called “Cwickies” — a play on the network’s name, just as the initials of “content wrap” are “CW.”

The five-second spots would be signaled by a logo and sold in a 15-second package of three, Morningstar said, and could run within a single show or be spread out during an evening’s programming. The quickie spots would not add to the clutter on the CW’s air time, he said, because they would be scheduled in place of a 15-second spot.

Five-second commercials are rare but not unprecedented. The Cadillac division of General Motors ran several in 2005 to promote cars that could go from zero to 60 mph in five seconds.

“If you give consumers more of what they want—the show—they will say great things about the brand that brought it to them,” Morningstar said. For starters, there will be “a limited number of advertisers” — perhaps three — in each episode of “CW Now,” Morningstar said. There have been discussions since March with marketers, he added.

CW executives acknowledged concerns that mixing sponsors’ products into episodes of “CW Now” might blur the distinctions between advertising and program content. “At its heart, it’s got to be an interesting show, relevant to viewers,” Morningstar said. “I can’t say that enough.”“If it looks like a big commercial, it’ll blow up on us and on the advertisers,” he added.