Ads on Hulu
fat:
Accoring to Silicon Alley Insider, when given the option for a single two minute commercial or four 30 second spots, Hulu claims people prefer the two minute ads.
This is a really stupid move for the advertisers. For us viewers, yeah, it’s great, we can set up the movie, go do something for 2 minutes while we ignore the commercial, then come back and watch our uninterrupted movie. Compare that to when Hulu inserts random 30 sec. commercials throughout— it’s so short, there’s not really time to go do something else, and it’s hardly worth lifting a finger to mute it, and so the viewer ends up actually watching the commercials. Changing this would be a huge gain for us viewers, but such an obviously huge loss for advertisers— I can’t believe they’d actually go for it.
I mean, I’m setting aside for the moment the very fact that trying to force or “trick” viewers into viewing advertisements is an unsustainable, old-media vestige. And by no means am I happy to have commercials in my movies. But I devote a lot of time and energy towards thinking about *both* sides of this kind of thing, and it just seems like anytime the advertiser/user balance gets too lopsided in either way, it’s bad for the system as a whole.
Shhhhh don’t tell them that! Just let them think the 2 min ad is an awesome idea!
