Monday, February 26, 2007
Academy Award Commercials
Interesting how different the commercials are between the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards. Aside from the price difference for a 30 second spot, $2.3 million vs. $1.5 million, the hype, the audiance, the type of commercial are all different. According to USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/movieawards/oscars/2004-02-23-oscar-ads_x.htm, there are standards for commercials at the Academy Awards:
"• No feminine hygiene products.
• No mention of Oscars, the Academy Awards or any kind of awards show. Robertson forced one advertiser whose script included people sitting in the Oscars audience to remove the reference.
• No use of an Oscar nominee or presenter in any ad. Catherine Zeta-Jones' telephone company commercials, for instance, were forbidden when she was a nominee last year.
• No ads that mention or use clips from nominated films. In fact, the Oscars prohibit all movie ads; the academy doesn't want any questions raised if a studio that advertised heavily wins a lot of Oscars.
• No mixed messages. The academy accepts ads from only one car company — this year it's Cadillac — so no other advertiser can show any other car in its commercial."
Personally, I think this is great and a mark which should be repeated more often. The content is the driver, as advertisers don't want to be associated to certain types of content, content should also set policy.
I wish these policies occured with online advertising. What happens more often than not is publishers selling themselves out to the nearest ad network. What that means for most is their content is commoditized under run-of-network (RON) and run-of site (ROS) media buys. This practice provides publishers with no control over who is advertising. Worse, advertisers are targeting content types which often lowers the value of the content and certainly raises the illusion of paid for editorial.
Further hurting publishers is the lowered value of their CPMs. Which typically causes publishers to post multiple ad units on every page making the above problem significantly worse. A downward spiral to say the least.
"• No feminine hygiene products.
• No mention of Oscars, the Academy Awards or any kind of awards show. Robertson forced one advertiser whose script included people sitting in the Oscars audience to remove the reference.
• No use of an Oscar nominee or presenter in any ad. Catherine Zeta-Jones' telephone company commercials, for instance, were forbidden when she was a nominee last year.
• No ads that mention or use clips from nominated films. In fact, the Oscars prohibit all movie ads; the academy doesn't want any questions raised if a studio that advertised heavily wins a lot of Oscars.
• No mixed messages. The academy accepts ads from only one car company — this year it's Cadillac — so no other advertiser can show any other car in its commercial."
Personally, I think this is great and a mark which should be repeated more often. The content is the driver, as advertisers don't want to be associated to certain types of content, content should also set policy.
I wish these policies occured with online advertising. What happens more often than not is publishers selling themselves out to the nearest ad network. What that means for most is their content is commoditized under run-of-network (RON) and run-of site (ROS) media buys. This practice provides publishers with no control over who is advertising. Worse, advertisers are targeting content types which often lowers the value of the content and certainly raises the illusion of paid for editorial.
Further hurting publishers is the lowered value of their CPMs. Which typically causes publishers to post multiple ad units on every page making the above problem significantly worse. A downward spiral to say the least.
Labels: advertising 2.0, online advertising, web 2.0
