How might we make TV ads useful?
I challenge you to ask a friend what they think about TV commercials, and find a positive answer. Or ask if TV ads are useful to them.
Disclaimer: In Australia we call TV commercials “Ads” (Advertising).
Respondents overwhelmingly hated ads. And say that they don’t watch them any more. Me too, to be honest. And yet — surely watching a few ads in exchange for free viewing should have some tolerance.
If ads don’t get fixed, will Free TV die? Will all viewers pay more?
An “acceptable weakness” of the research I’ve done is that it’s user-focussed. Of course the benefits for TV networks and advertisers from meeting viewers’ latent needs in better ways, are staggering. Advertisers are already moving to more engaging platforms.
Can Free TV upgrade their ads to make advertisers & viewers happy?
Survey results indicated a low opinion of ads. Ads are irrelevant. Most people have taken up more ad-free TV (or less TV overall).
And though they hate ads, 3 in 4 wouldn’t pay to remove them. But they do pay for ad-free services!
A complicated relationship.
A representative sample is critical to good analysis
I’m usually quite focussed on getting a representative sample. So many responses were 35–44yo women that I immediately used this group for analysis (filtered), my persona, and interviewees — but even so this remains an issue, an “acceptable weakness” for a personal project that I’d prefer to fix.
“I only watch a show with ads if I have no choice.”
(“And then I fast forward the ads!”)
- 21% said only 1/4 of the shows they watch have ads in them now.
- 23% already say almost all their viewing has no ads.
As people watch fewer shows with ads in them— can we make those ads more attractive and keep those viewers?
The interview revealed thoughts behind and beyond the survey results.
3-pass Affinity Mapping
2 open sorts and 1 closed sort produced insights, which were then further sorted and mapped for higher level insights.
People hate irrelevant ads… and think all ads are irrelevant.
They WANT relevant ads.
Ads can be irrelevant when someone doesn’t need the item or they’ve already bought the item, and if a relevant ad is repeated over and over it adds nothing.
TV ads. Too many, too repetitive, intrusive, irrelevant.
Viewers want to be able to DO things with ads if they are relevant.
On Facebook, they accept “liking” ads. Users like to save some ads for later, or follow a call to action. They like seeing posts their friends have liked.
Interview and survey participants revealed options they’d like with ads.
“We want SKIP!”
Obviously, although people want relevant ads, the option highly valued was skip.
Still over 50% wanted each of the other options.
70% of respondents find almost no ads of interest, in any way.
a further 20% of respondents find just 1/4 of ads of any interest.
- Can we customise the ads to make them relevant?
- Could we have less ads , just the relevant ones?
- Can we let people skip sometimes?
- Can fewer but relevant ads actually help advertisers?
- Can we let viewers do something with an ad?
Letting viewers do something with an ad might be possible with FTA.
But relevant ads means changing the ads to suit the viewer.
So we need online TV.
Forget Free-to-Air. Shift to Free-to-Stream
Question: Has the current Catchup TV done this already?
Catchup could do so much. It can be customised, allow different length ads for different viewers, let people do stuff (like see a longer ad).
It does not do those things.
Strangely, Catchup doesn’t even let you rewind an ad if you are interested and want to skip back.
Perhaps our FTA networks have given up on ads. And advertisers aren’t as open to using catchup.
More importantly, viewers themselves will only move to catchup if the experience is better than FTA — very possible, but right now Catchup lowers the picture quality and prevents viewers from ad skipping.
It is time to improve FTA On-Demand and how its ads work
Let’s prototype something. Let’s start very simply.
How does a viewer fast forward their ads now?
It’s a combination of simple steps. People focus on finding when the show is back.
Any prototype using ads must be simple and rewarding.
- Get feedback on disliked ads
- User should be able to use the remote without looking
- Use the buttons they know
- Reward their engagement with the ability to “Skip”
- Enable Rewind and Skip back in any ads
I created a few low-fi prototypes in Final Cut pro using real ads and simulated skip scenarios. Users used a remote to surf through the ads, like and skip, read information screens and help screens.
Task 1 used channel buttons
People already use channel buttons to surf through parallel running ads. Would surfing ads this way work?
Users were comfortable with the buttons but changing ads mid-ad wasn’t liked — with a slight improvement when an info bar gave the ad name. They also only ever pressed “+”, never going back to the last ad.
Task 2 used the skip▶️ button and up🔼/down🔽 for Like/Dislike
Many users skip ▶️ ads now — the ▶️ button is familiar, and 🔼/🔽 are near. Many users are used to these buttons, and they’re easily used without looking, but does it work outside menu navigation?
Task 3 added colour options
Purely optional extra functions.
Some of the user flows tested are below. This was a low-fidelity prototype.
Take a look at the first basic scenario above. The ads start. A viewer watches 5 seconds and presses 🔼 or 🔽, and can then skip. They actively pay attention for 5 second, teach the system whether the ad is good or bad for them, and get through 6 ads in 30 seconds. And we can use those results to provide better ads.
Usability Testing showed users would press 🔼 or 🔽 to get to skip.
- Channel +/- wasn’t effective
- 🔼 or 🔽 before Skip ▶️ was easy to learn and use
- “Like” wasn’t liked. “Indifferent” 🔼 may be a closer feeling of better ads
- “Remind me” (Blue •) was wanted
- “Send to app” (Green •) was dismissed — but “Mail to Phone” was okay if it was for later. People want to use their phone to AVOID ads.
- On a second iteration, I tested & questioned gamifying with positive thoughts
There’s more to research. But this is where this project ends, for now.
- I would trial 4 levels of like (🔽🔽, 🔽, 🔼, 🔼🔼). My hunch is that almost every ad will be a 🔽, and using the 🔽🔽 will particularly identify ads to be hidden.
- I’d simulate a “send to phone” button press, sending a message or email immediately to my subject when they select it.
- There’s interest in social sharing, seeing what a friend likes, asking a friend, or sharing ads with friends. This is a more difficult task to achieve, but worth evaluating with regards to Twitter, Facebook and so on.
- I’d research simple gamifying options. To simulate what we already do they’d earn a ⭐️ by watching 5 seconds of ad, and selecting 🔼 or 🔽.
They’d USE a ⭐️ by ▶️ skipping the rest of the ad.
But they could save up stars, earn more stars by watching a longer ad, and perhaps watch a whole show without ads. - Did you spot the flaw to the research?
We tested them liking or disliking ads - and that worked! But we didn’t test what happens when the system actually does show much better ads. How does that affect the viewer? - Create a higher fidelity prototype, fully interactive rather than simulated.
We can make TV ads useful by
- getting feedback on preferred ads, thus providing more relevant ads
- rewarding users who give feedback by allowing them to skip ads
- helping viewers ACT on an ad that interests them
Online TV (not broadcast) can provide those capabilities — showing more ads viewers like, allowing advertisers to target the people more likely to respond, and allowing a viewer to actually learn more about what the advertiser is selling.
