Stay Tuned for Ads During TV Shows

A new strategy aims to grab the attention of viewers now using DVR to skip commercial breaks: in tests, so-called “in-show ads” are run on the top or bottom of the screen—and even on occasion in the middle—during the action, Advertising Age reports. Execs are betting that Americans today have the “capacity to accept multiple messaging all at once.” Early results are encouraging, they say: ads run in a crawl at the bottom of the screen during NASCAR coverage did significantly better than spots.

In one ABC experiment, some 29% more people on average remembered an ad when it was packaged in the center of weather graphics, rather than during a break. Of course, there's a risk of audience rejection, as some found with ads that superimposed on a transparent screen over a sports match. “While I think viewers can handle a lot," one skeptic notes, "that doesn't mean they necessarily want to."
(More advertising stories.)