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 on 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 2007-2008 ended on Thursday with sneak peeks at the schedules of CW, owned by the CBS Corp and Time Warner, and Fox Broadcasting, part of the News Corp.
Last month, Fox tried interspersing humorous program snippets between commercials, and executives said they would try other versions of the snippets during the 2007-2008 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 programs.
The other reason to tinker with traditional commercial breaks is the penchant of DVR owners to skip through spots when they play back recorded programs. That problem is getting worse as more households acquire DVRs.
"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 2006-2007 season.
In content wraps, products of advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Toyota Motor and Unilever are integrated into a set of three short program 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, intended as shorter versions of content wraps, 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.
As an example, Morningstar described how a movie studio could run three Cwickies that would tease the plot of a coming film, then follow them with a trailer in a traditional 30-second spot.
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 100kph in under five seconds. In 1998, the Master Lock division of Fortune Brands ran an even shorter spot, a one-second commercial.
The CW series that may run without spots is CW Now, a new magazine-style entertainment show that will be seen from 7pm to 7:30pm on Sundays. The series, from the producers of the syndicated show Extra, will report on movies, music, gossip and other topics aimed at the core CW audience ages 18 to 34.
CW Now is deemed ripe for "incorporating your brand into the fabric of the show," as Morningstar put it, because the concept of the series was inspired by the content wraps -- making each 30-minute episode a kind of content wrap on steroids.
"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, referring to turning over the time that would be devoted to commercials to the producers of the series.
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 interested in becoming sponsors, 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.
Ostroff agreed, promising the series would be "editorially independent" even as "we're working with advertisers in unique ways."
As an example of how CW Now advertising integrations would work, Morningstar outlined a possible segment on popular fashions, music or restaurants, featuring the star of a film from a movie studio that was sponsoring the episode.
Jon Nesvig, president for sales at Fox, said executives believed that weaving program snippets into commercial breaks was the best way to keep eyeballs glued to the TV set because "there's something in that form that captures viewers."
As evidence, Nesvig pointed to the origin of the popular Fox series The Simpsons as "program snippets in The Tracey Ullman Show' from 1987 to 1989, shown before and after commercials.
In its test last month, Fox presented eight-second shorts during breaks with an animated cab driver named Oleg.
"I don't think Oleg will return," Nesvig said, "but we're looking at all our options."
Now that the upfront week is finished, discussions can start between the networks and the agencies on the purchase of commercial time during the 2007-2008 season.
Last spring, advertisers spent an estimated US$9 billion in the upfront market ahead of the 2006-2007 season.
CW took in US$600 million to US$650 million during the upfront market last spring, while Fox sold an estimated US$1.8 billion.
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