iTMS TV Terrifies Advertisers

This guy's a moron. If you know anything about marketing/advertising today, you know that there is a ridiculously broad amount of media you can buy today, and TV is just a small portion. That's like saying that by buying an AD on ABC during Desperate Housewives your brand should also be mentioned in any Desperate Housewives print ads..... The iPod and Television are not the same media.

I repeat myself when under stress. I repeat myself when under stress. I repeat myself...

Well, it'll be easy enough to scroll through them on the iPod, anyway. If the trade off is a $.99 price tag (which I doubt will happen, but we can dream, eh?), it'd be worth the second it takes to flick the wheel through a cluster of ads.

Hmmm, Penguinkin, that idea sounds oddly familiar (http://www.tuaw.com/2005/10/13/tuaw-poll-1-99-or-free-with-ads/)... ;-)

Tell ya what. Let's have two versions of the files. We'll have the $2 paid download uncut and without commercial interruption. The other will be the same as the broadcast version, with ads intact. It will be free. Think that'll make them happy?

Yes, I definitely think of the shows as being advertisements for themselves. Last evening, I downloaded the pilot episode of "Night Stalker" and really enjoyed it (Gabrielle Union is easy on the eyes too), and when I got home, I immediately tuned to ABC to catch last night's episode.

You can make any argument you like, but this has never been the model and never will be. Advertisers are just going to have to come up with better models rather than reflexively peeing their pants at every technological innovation. The best advertisers will always find ways to advertise effectively. For example, and this is just a crazy, wild-eyed idea. You could say.., try to make interesting, funny, and engaging advertising. And not make mind-numbingly stupid and annoying advertising. Advertisers are so used to captive eyeballs that very few have even tried to do anything but shovel the same old repetitive, moronic crap at us. We watch Tivo almost exclusively, but I almost always stop and watch the new SONIC commercials with the clueless guys, because they're funny. (I realize only part of the country gets these commercials - sorry for the obscure reference) I actually watched the "Island Fire" commercial three times in a row once on my TiVo because it cracked me up. I watch Apple commercials. I watch promos. I often rewind the Tivo to catch a commercial for something that looks interesting. (Single serve coffee makers, for example) I hit the "Thumbs Up" on my Tivo while fast forwarding if something catches my eye. I request more info from text ads on my Tivo, and I watch ads and promos downloaded to my Tivo occasionally. I also click Google text ads. I often SEEK OUT Google text ads - it's a great way to find the product I need. I also click advertising banners in TUAW, MACNN and others, and I don't block them because I'm happy to "pay with my eyeballs" for their services. So shut up, stupid dinosaur advertisers. Figure it out and stop harassing the digerati. :-)

Sorry for my obnoxious comment here, but I hope you mean "bejesus." I spent ten minutes trying to figure out what "begebus" was, thinking it might be TV terminology (um... yeah, I can be that slow), and finally landed on "bejesus" being scared out of hucksters. I also finally decided that if bejesus was being scared out of them, they weren't paying close enough attention to ratings in the first place, because they pay for ads based on those ratings, and those ratings only tell them about people watching the broadcast on TV. Also and finally, this likely explains why it takes TOO DAMNED LONG for Lost episodes (and other episodes) to appear on ITMS, in an effort to keep the hucksters from utterlly freaking out (at least until the broadcast ratings show that people are surprisingly willing to watch their shows... and their ads... more than once). Ad Ver Tisers of the bejesus sort are apparently Very Simple Beings incapable of Not Worrying and/or Fussing about Change. Change will come. Change is coming. Change is now. Have a sandwich.

Pay for my download. I'll watch the commercial. Pay for my DVD, I'll even switch to Pepsi...

I thought about this as well and obviously ads shouldn't be permanently attached to media purchased for repeated viewing. Think old episodes of your favorite show with 3 year old ads for products that don't exist anymore - that makes zero sense. But there is a difference between Apple's product and DVDs of a show - you can't buy the DVDs until well after the season is over and the shows have enjoyed a solo, exclusively located first run. I'm not including bittorrent here, because it's obviously not a sanctioned model.