canadiancow

FYI, 788s do have ads.

Nitehawk

Give it time nomad. They just need to roll out the latest batch of updates across the fleet. At least on the Thales system.

drvannostren

Haha true, though his ad has changed a few times. I do wish they'd mix it up more often, I'm not ad expert but it makes sense to me you wouldn't wanna hit the same customers all the time.

tinchote

It's been gone for a couple years now, but I still have nightmares with Maria and her vineyard.

ACfly

Just got off the brand new 789 from YYZ-YVR and you could skip the ads...

yyznomad

I was on FIN805 in J. I watched BBT, New Girl, and Portlandia and none of them showed ads.

superangrypenguin

I wasn't 100% sure until your post (99%), but yes, this would be my experience in J as well on the 788.

yyznomad

Loving the enhancements.

KenHamer

Random thoughts...

If you really want to make the ads go away, you could write to the advertisers (as write, with pen and paper, not e-mail) calmly explaining how irritating being forced to watch the same advertisements over and over and over. They'd need to receive several (i.e. >3) letters, and the letters must be personal (that is, not a copied fill-in-the-blanks form letter.) I'm sure Air Canada has done a good job of selling those advertisers on the benefits of the captive audience without ever touching on the possible downsides. But if enough people were to express their concerns in manner more than perfunctory it would not take long before at least some of them start thinking "OMG! What have we done." Of course, once they cancel, they'll just be replaced by someone else.
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I'm not convinced that most advertising is actually effective, particularly now days when you can go online and easily hunt for whatever it is you are looking for. Moreover, it's been a social meme since forever that ads are annoying and dishonest. I know there are lots of alleged studies showing that advertising works, but for the most part those studies are provided by the people selling advertising. And I suspect you only need to be exposed to an advertisement once in the wrong context (forced to on an airplane) to develop an extremely bad "taste" for the product being flogged. Brought To You By Carl's Jr.



Advertisements have also been held in large disrepute since long before "this coffee will save your marriage" and "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV." And in what I can only presume is an attempt to stand out from the crowd they seem to have gotten worse over the years, in some cases much worse. But whatever the cause, most advertising, particular on TV and radio seems like Adam Sandler personally took a dump on each and every one of them. Maybe most people really are stupid enough to be convinced by most conventional advertising, but it's a depressing thought.

It is possible to make compelling and interesting advertisements... all one need do is watch the SuperBowl on a US channel. Problem is, there's still a big question about whether an ad is actually effective simply because people liked watching it. Brought To You By Carl's Jr.



I've been ad-free since the dawn of the remote control. I don't imagine I'm alone. Now days with a PVR it's even easier. From 2002-2014 I had commercial free satellite radio. When the quality of it declined (probably due to the merged monopoly of the 2 previous carriers) I dropped it, and bought a purpose dedicated smart phone and signed up with the only carrier that I had not seen advertised in movie theaters; now I just stream commercial free music from one of a gazillion sources.

Speaking of cinemas, I too know that at Cineplex (for example) the standard commercial+trailers delay is pretty much exactly 15 minutes, with ads consuming the first 6 or so minutes. So I just time myself to be seated 10 minutes after the posted time. I may miss a few minutes of the trailers, but whatever. Brought To You By Carl's Jr.



'Course Cineplex has now provided an incentive to be there ahead of the ads in the form of Scene points (free movies) earned by playing their Timeplay triva game. But now that Scene is devaluing their points come November 4th, even that won't be an incentive for me. Otherwise, when I do arrive early enough to play I make a point of using my phone at full brightness until the instant the trailers start. I also make an effort to avoid patronizing any business that advertises in cinemas, as per my mobile phone example above. (Wind, if you are wondering.)

And of course coming full circle to the ads on IFE, as someone else noted, it's pretty easy to busy yourself with other tasks while you bypass the ads. Back when I was flying they repeated the ads before every selected movie. My solution was to board the plane and promptly turn on the IFE. I would then peruse the contents, pick out what I thought I would be watching, and start the commercials. In the mean time, I'd extract my comfort gear from my carry on, place my travel credentials back in the carry on, scrounge pillows from empty J seats, and so on. By the time I was done I usually had 3 or more movies that I could now enjoy commercial free. Brought To You By Carl's Jr.



It may take some effort, though not as much as you might think. But it is certainly possible to insulate yourself from most advertising. Brought To You By Carl's Jr.

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Sorry for all the typos. I had to run and catch a movie so didn't have time to proofread. By the time I got there, got my ticket, picked up dinner, and sat down, they were halfway through the final trailer and long, long past the ads. By the time I was settled the movie had started. (Interesting Korean movie called "Assassination.")

Speaking of movies, when I think of commercials, I think of this:

24left

Ken, thanks

Although I addressed the issues of frequency and captive eyeballs in my posts upthread, I'll ad this quote attributed to John Wanamaker, when asked the question of whether advertising works, he said: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half".

As for this topic of ads on the AC IFE's, I will just remind you all again, if you don't like them, don't watch them. Find something else to do.

canadiancow

Well even discounting my experience, we have another person who's seen ads.

I've only been in J on the 787 if that makes a difference.

yyznomad

Chalk it up to typical AC consistent inconsistency... when I was on FIN 805 this past Wednesday, I made it a point to watch something (based on this thread) to see if I would be forced to watch ads... but I was surprised that there were zero ads and it went directly to the "viewer discretion" message before jumping right into the start of the show.

Perhaps what I witnessed was some sort of "stop gap" in order to get to forced ads or something...

ACfly

I attempted to see 3 movies (1 was so boring I gave it up) on my B789 aircraft, and 2 movies had one ad at the beginning which I could quickly skip, and the other movie had NO ad and started immediately.

So yes... consistently inconsistent is the right phrase... Will see if my 788 flight today does the same thing.

I'llMissCP

Just off 873 today, was still able to FFW.

D582

RE: Ads on 787s.. in my experience I have seen ads before movies (typically not more than 60 seconds) and none before TV shows.