so you thought you could skip the adverts

From ITV, the commercials that won’t wait till the break 01st October 2008

If you’re one of those television viewers who always changes channel the moment the commercials start, your flipping may soon be futile.
For broadcasters have come up with a system that shows adverts during the programmes.

The new technology, developed for ITV, is called ‘automatically placed overlay advertising’ and uses computers to seek out suitable spaces on screen.

Areas such as blue sky or blank walls in programmes can be identified as a place in which commercial logos and messages can be placed.

The system has been developed because of concerns in commercial TV about the growing trend among viewers of using new technology to skip through commercial breaks, threatening advertising revenue.

The overlay advertising is currently being tested on news footage on the ITV Local website. ITV claims there are ‘absolutely no plans’ to introduce the system on to its TV shows.

A senior source at the company said it would not legally be allowed to use the system under current regulations. They stressed it was simply an online application that they are trialling.

But Ofcom is preparing for a shake-up of its advertising rules which could lead to major changes in the regulations.

Broadcasters inserting adverts into the middle of dramas and documentaries would come under intense fire from viewers and programme-makers.

Subliminal advertising is banned on British TV along with product placement. It is unclear whether the new scheme would face opposition from regulators Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Authority.

Although ITV has officially denied any plans to use the system on its television shows, Simon Fell, head of future technology at ITV, said it had ‘a lot of potential’.
He added: ‘If there is a scene in a programme where there’s time, then it could give us a chance to get an ad away.
‘But obviously on television you won’t be seeing one of these appearing at a crunch point in a drama. It [the technology] looks at moments in the video where it finds segments that are big enough to get a non-moving logo in.
‘Rather than an editor sitting through it and finding space, and all the effort that takes, this does it automatically.
‘We are trialling it online, where it is a manageable area and allows us to get feedback from both advertisers and viewers. It gives us another tool in the arsenal and it’s subtle.’