Jagboi

The trade off in free to air TV was the ads paid the cost of producing the show and broadcasting it.

A ticket on AC is far from free, the consumer is paying for the service provided, and AC is at liberty to charge whatever the market will bear for the flights they operate. That's a very different situation than free content like a website or TV broadcast. That's why it's so insulting to be subjected to ads when I have paid to be on a flight.

I've certainly not seen ads like that on AA, BA or US. It makes AC look a lot more like Ryanair than a so called 4 star airline.

24left

I only provided a little history and evolution for context.

The ads aren't going anywhere, so my point remains that there are ways to make them less annoying to those of us strapped into a seat. Those decisions are not up to me.

Sopwith

This thread and this post capture something that has always confused me about advertising. I get the fact that advertising doesn't work if you do it once. It only works if you repeat it many times. The challenge is to repeat it enough times to embed the message, but not enough to really .... people off. (Joel Matlin, are you listening!?)

I don't know much about advertising, but I do know what really ....es me off. Saturation advertising is one. But what REALLY ....es me off is when the advertiser disables my ability to mute, fast forward, or otherwise opt out of the ad. In these cases I boil over and instantly develop an intense hatred for the sponsor. Is this what they want? That's what confuses me. They can't be that dumb. Or can they? Is it like political attack ads, i.e. everyone claims to be offended but they appear to work. If an ad ....es me off, is there still some residual value in the fact that I've actually seen it, even though it was against my will and it intensely annoyed me? Am I among a small minority that reacts so negatively to having the controls disabled during ads?

BTW, even though Joel got sacked, I will never, ever do business with Alarm Force because of being carpet bombed by their ads.

24left

"Frequency Modifies Behaviour".

In theory, it's a nice thing. It reality, it can range from annoying to "carpet bombing" (great phrase, Sopwith).

There is all manner of research that can suggest the effective frequency of exposure (to the ads) that should be used. Sometimes it is followed and works, other times, not so much.

As to your point about the advertiser disabling your ability to tune out/ turn off or opt out, it is not the advertiser, it is the medium. The advertiser is the one selling the product. They or their ad team create the ads, the media people place the ads in specific environments where (based on research), they think their ads will be best received by the target audience.

Your point, advertising doesn't work if done once, was the going theory until the 1984 Apple ad in the SuperBowl - which ran only once. It and other similar ads in that environment became immensely successful exactly because they only ran once but created huge buzz. (Now most of them are viewed repeatedly on various websites).

And yes, the lack of ability to turn the ads off is important but only becomes more annoying when forced to view the same ones repeatedly without escape. Captive eyeballs everywhere.

PLeblond

I don't go see movies very often, but last time I went, there were a bunch of commercials before the movie started. I did not read the terms and conditions, but I was specifically paying to see the movie and was subjected to commercials.

Should there be an * on my movie ticket saying I would be be "subject to a forced viewing of ads from which [the theatre] makes additional revenue."?

Adam Smith

How is it that we're four pages into this thread and no one has yet referred to this as an "enhancement"?

In principle, I'm extremely annoyed at this. I don't mind it especially in Y, but in J, come on. The few measly pennies that they're going to generate per flight are vastly outweighed by the annoyance it causes to the customers. (I'm actually curious how much revenue AC generates from ads, which it doesn't disclose in its financials).

In practice, I don't know that it really matters. Like zorn, I generally queue up the VOD while reading something, so I don't usually watch the ads anyway.

Interesting idea from jaysona to make IFE more of a PPV and not include it in the base fare. I thought Nitehawk's idea was perhaps more interesting though. I can't see a lot of people being willing to shell out $20 or something big for IFE, but pay a buck or two to have ad-less IFE, that I can see being fairly popular.

24left, some good insights. But I'm curious, with regards to frequency, how much is too much? I feel like a lot of the ads that AC runs get repeated so often that they're actually creating ill will, at least with those of us who fly a lot. And what's the right balance? I feel like 90 seconds of ads isn't bad for watching a movie or maybe even a TV show, but if we have to suffer through 3 minutes of junk to watch a 20-minute TV show, I feel like that also might cross the line.

PLeblond, you've hit on one of my big pet peeves. I think they may have dialed it back a bit now, but I remember going to see movies 5-10 years ago where there were ~10 minutes of ads and 10+ minutes of previews. By the time, the movie finally started playing, I was in a bad mood and sometimes had even forgotten what I went to see. Or I would just show up late so I could miss the ads, which I think a lot of people were doing.

CdnFlier

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Kbd) AppleWebKit/537.35+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.3.2.2252 Mobile Safari/537.35+)

So, on my red eye last night there were fast forwarding ads. which seems odd since the previous night there was the enhanced system. Perhaps it's a trial on some flights? Or maybe one of the planes didn't have the latest movies.

I'm also assuming the IFE I the same system for J and Y and I doubt AC can target things to particular cabins - heck, otherwise I could see them displaying different ads to J vs Y passengers.

Adam Smith

See jaysona's posts upthread. The systems are technically capable of it, it's a matter of enabling it and setting it up.

Frequentlander

I think that because you (we) don't have the option of arriving late or not showing up for these ads, AC can command a premium to the advertizers. The news that PAX - and worse yet their premium PAX - can fast forward through the ads probably caused a disturbance in the Force with some of the adverizers.

Ads on planes is one of my Noah's arc of pet peeves - to the extent that I have pretty much ditched it and watch what I want to watch on a laptop or tablet - with the added advantage that it doesn't crap-out half way into a TPSC flight.

Adam Smith

Yes, that was 24left's point. Knowing that people will actually watch the ads makes the ads more valuable, hence AC can charge more. It's the same with any ad. It's why live sports has become such a huge deal for TV networks, because people generally watch live and will sit through the ads. Same with online ads you can't skip etc.

CdnFlier

Whoops! Missed that, mobile browser combined with too many red eye flights.

That said, the matter of enabling and setting it up is likely a more significant barrier for AC than we'd like to think. Heck on my last flight to YYC the IFE was convinced I had just landed in YVR. Figure that one out.

Dorian

....and every other show/movie you watch that flight.

It has made me hate the advertisers.

Adam Smith

I think we all know it's probably too high a barrier for AC, just that it's possible in theory

24left

I explained a lot of this in posts 44 and 49.

There is no answer to the question how much is too much as it depends on the product purchase cycle and the media and the target audience, which are always variable.


Fun fact for those of you who still watch TV shows on TV: Commercial airtime is regulated slightly differently in the U.S. and in Canada. The U.S. allows for a few more minutes. When the same show airs here in simulcast, the networks often run their own promos or another ad to fill the airtime.

And yes, for those old enough to remember, actual content of shows has decreased while number of minutes of advertising has increased.


None of my Intro to Media 101 is going to change what I stated upthread about pax in seats being a captive audience. Essentially, if the ads annoy you enough, you will have to develop your own solution for avoiding them.

Orcair

I believe most of AC's fleet uses THALES TopFlight I-4500 for IFE (except for the 77W HD and 787s, which are Panasonic ex3), which is a previous generation of AVOD system compared to current models. Being older, I believe it is unable to differentiate between seats and its age is another reason why it is so slow and the touch-screen is less effective, especially when compared to newer systems.