Apple's new iPod Video

Posted Oct 12th 2005 3:36PM by Chris Thilk
Filed under: Gripes

So far I haven't seen anything saying one way or the other whether TV shows bought for playback on Apple's new iPod Video (unveiled today and covered exstensively on Engadget) will include commercials.

There are two scenarios I see here. First, the shows have their original commercials intact. The upside for advertisers in this is the increased reach they'll achieve by latching on to the portable media. The downside is that campaigns traditionally have a short shelf life so there's not much value in showing a commercial for a sale that ended six months ago. The second option is original advertising that gets attached to the show when it's downloaded. This is more practical as a media buy since time is of the essence. The problem with this is who do you buy the ad time from? The network that produced the show or Apple, who's supplying the distribution method?

Just like I think it's only a matter of time before Apple starts selling ads for podcast downloads I think eventually there will be a call to place ads before or within video content from iTunes.

Reader Comments

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1. haha u guys are such nerds who cares about a stupid commercial? haha it is so funny to see u guys like type all this emotional stuff. YAY EMOS lol

Posted at 10:30AM on Nov 15th 2005 by big pimpin

2. If you go into the iTunes music store you'll see that the shows are only ~42-43 minutes long so I'm assuming they're without commercials.

Posted at 4:46PM on Oct 12th 2005 by John S.

3. The episodes of Lost for sale in the store have a length of ~43 minutes. That pretty much says the commercials from the initial broadcast are not included.

Posted at 9:11PM on Oct 12th 2005 by Eddie Hargreaves

4. I read that the tv shows bought from iTunes will infact not include commercials. All the videos will be commercial-free.

Posted at 6:11PM on Oct 12th 2005 by Rajiv Doshi

5. The announcement this morning confirmed that the ABC shows available for download will NOT have commercials.

Posted at 6:58PM on Oct 12th 2005 by mirateck

6. Why would anyone willing pay for downloadable videos with ads? The whole point is to get it WITHOUT THE ADVERTS!!! People hate adverts.

Posted at 11:32AM on Oct 13th 2005 by xman

7. http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCompanyNewsArticle.jhtml?duid=mtfh97367_2005-10-13_02-27-06_n12592633_newsml

no commercials.

Posted at 9:54AM on Oct 13th 2005 by Steve Hall

8. As already noted, they will be without commercials. But, the bigger question in our minds is this. If people are willing to pay $2 to watch a commercial free version of their shows on a 2.5 inch screen, would they be willing to pay to watch commercial-free TV? And, if you can download the show to your iPod, shouldn't that mean that you could also play it on your Mac? And then, if they create a simple interface to send that signal to a large screen TV, wouldn't that potentially create an Apple media center that actually by-passes network TV?

As they did with the music download world, Apple may have just started a significant change in the world of network TV. Given the consumers ever-growing resentment to our ever-growing need to shove commercials down their throats, people may be willing to get rid of ads by paying for their content.

While we may look back at this as a nice thing, we might also look back at this as the day the network advertising started it's dealth spiral.

We blogged about it at http://blog.brandexperiencelab.org/experience_manifesto/2005/10/disney_offers_n.html (You may need to cut & paste to get the entire link).

David

Posted at 11:12AM on Oct 13th 2005 by David Polinchock

Apple's new iPod Video

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