1. Watch an hour of commercial television, but don’t leave during the commercial
ID: 462465 • Letter: 1
Question
1. Watch an hour of commercial television, but don’t leave during the commercials. Any hour of commercial TV will do. Notice:
a) How many commercials were in each “pod” (group)? Did that change during the hour? Why or why not? Write about any patterns you noticed, that you thought were interesting.
b) How long was each commercial? Ads for other shows on that network are still ads, and even station identifications count, so notice how many different lengths of commercials you see. Five seconds, fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, etc.
c) State what show you were watching, and who you think the target audience is FOR THAT SHOW. Do you think the ads you watched fit that same target audience? Why or why not?
2. Choose any product’s or company’s campaign that you especially enjoyed. After the hour has ended, go online and see whether the images and messages you saw on TV are echoed online.
a) Go to that company’s website, and make those comparisons.
b) Where else online do you see ads for that company? Notice also how well the ad fits the target market of the website where you saw it (not the company’s own website, but the website you were looking at when you also saw the ad).
3. Add anything else that you thought was interesting about this little exercise.
Write your responses in memo format (rather than APA format). If you’re unfamiliar with memo format, this assignment is written in memo format (look at the first five lines, in bold). It really is that easy. Please limit your responses to one or two typed pages.
Explanation / Answer
I sat for 1 hour on a TV Channel.
a) How many commercials were in each “pod” (group)? Did that change during the hour? Why or why not? Write about any patterns you noticed, that you thought were interesting.
In each slot time of time or pod, there were 11 advertisements. Yes, they do change during the hour. But, most of them are repeated over a period of 2 pods. The reason that they donot change during an hour, that i think might be that such advertisements are targeted properly to some consumers. e.g. I sat on Sunday morning, and it is expected by the TV experts that most of the kids would be watching TV on Sundays. TV Ads are targeted to them, so that for a whole hour, if they see a program, such advertisements can be reached to them. There may be other reasons also.
Some patterns that i find interesting were that each alternate advertisement were from different category. i.e. It was not that just after an advertisement for Car, there was not any Vehicle advertisement just next to Car ad. No food or FMCG products are advertised together.
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