1. I subscribe to the Mark Cuban school of thought that if people are avoiding your product (such as the music industry), maybe you just need to improve your product.

I believe that holds true for commercials. When do people not skip commercials? During the Super Bowl. Why is that? Because advertisers go out of their way to have fresh commercials that are entertaining.

Why limit that attitude to the Super Bowl? Give people something to see, and they won't want to skip it. Keep ads fresh -- don't run the same campaign for 18 months until everyone is screaming at their TV.

In the Dallas market, we have these horribly insipid Acme Brick commercials featuring a monkey and Troy Aikman. It was cute for the first 3 seconds, and for the past year has been wearing thin. Troy asks a question, a monkey smiles and hits a buzzer, and the word "acme brick" shows up on the little screen, suggesting the monkey chose acme brick. At the end, Troy asks the monkey who his favorite announcer is, and the monkey buzzes and the screen reads "Pat Summerall." (an NFL Hall of Fame worthy announcer, for the record)

That commercial airs all the time and everyone is so sick of it -- and then Acme recently updated it. Same commercial, same visuals, just a few different questions. No one on earth is going to pay attention to the commercial just because you changed the questions. Does this update mean I'll have to see the same commercial for the next 12 months? Probably.

That kind of advertising is what makes people want to skip commercials. Keep the content good, fresh, and entertaining, and you'll go far to keep your audience.

Posted at 4:54PM on Jul 13th 2005 by Andrew Kaufmann

2. I've always thought that TV ads in the UK were better than those in the US - more creative and less annoying. This makes me wonder - are people in the UK less (or more?) likely to skip ads than people in the US? I know that when I'm actively watching TV, I'll always skip ads, but when the TV is on while I'm doing something else, I'll usually just allow the ads to play, unless some incredibly obnoxious ad comes on (like that STUPID "Select Comfort" ad - I'm not sure why but that one drives me crazy!).

Posted at 8:57PM on Jul 17th 2005 by John Merryman