It is time for a commercial break and a single, male viewer watches adverts for grooming products and racy sports cars. The family next door, though, glued to the same programme, is tempted instead by package holidays and a new people carrier.

Broadcasters are to introduce advertisements tailored to the personal tastes of individual viewers by using information gathered from postcodes, viewing preferences and customer research. The move is designed to halt the drift from television to the internet.

BSkyB is trialling a scheme called AdSmart in which adverts will be stored on customers' Sky+HD set-top boxes and transmitted during "live" viewing, ending the traditional "one size fits all" advert break. It aims to roll out the scheme to viewers next year.

However there are fears that "addressable advertising" could be an invasion of privacy and aggravate viewers. BSkyB promised that its 10 million subscribers would receive targeted adverts only with their permission.

Television advertisers are fighting to maintain influence over consumers who are used to receiving a range of targeted advertising responses each time they place a keyword search into Google. An estimated 50 per cent of all advertising spend is wasted, and agencies that buy television advertising space are supporting BSkyB's initiative in the belief that more relevant commercials might prevent viewers' channel-hopping during breaks.

A BSkyB spokesman said: "A single, male might see an advert for a Mondeo but the family next door could see an ad for a people carrier. We could deliver localised ads, so you might see one for the Ford dealership in your area. And we can update ad campaigns. If viewers record a programme at Christmas, we could replace all those Boxing Day furniture sales adverts when the programme is played a month later."

BSkyB added that it would not target customers by analysing which programmes individual viewers watch, nor would it buy in data about their purchasing habits.

The media giant hopes to avoid the controversy that engulfed BT when it employed a system that tracked the internet habits of its customers in order to target them with relevant advertising. Condemned as online snooping, the system was dropped in 2009.

Sky's competitors are also pursuing personalised services. Virgin Media has developed a set-top box that enables up to eight different users, and their viewing tastes, to be identified. The new Virgin TiVo box recommends programmes and films to viewers on the basis of their past choices.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 40986.html

Won't affect me since I don't use such services, or unless the Beeb attempt it/other channels seriously improve their output... but what do you make of it?

Surely the whole point of Sky+ (and other PVRs) is to remove the requirement to watch TV 'live'? I watch.. a fair amount of TV, IMO, and I watch very little of it when it's actually broadcast. Maybe 1 or 2 hours a week, tops.

Jon

Not having a TV, reading papers or magazines and by using adblock means that my major source of advertising input is from the side of a bus.

About time we ran this again.

NO ADVERTS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3q2iZuU5WM

Adverts flash past at 32 or 64 speed. Marvellous

Yeah, and we're all going to stay for the adverts....
Doubt it.
Even if they don't channel flick, I know plenty of people who mute the TV when adverts are on anyway, so they become just about useless.

Exactly. That's what I do, or hop to another channel for a couple of minutes.

I don't often channel flick myself, mainly because most channels have their adverts on at the same time. ie More or less on the hour and 10-15 minutes past, half past and 45-50minutes past.

Can anyone explain why they seem to put the adverts in a 30 minute programme about a third of the way in rather than halfway? You only watch about 5-7 minutes before the adverts, then get about 20 minutes of programme again before it ends.

I’m sure Sky will lock this behaviour - you’ll have to play the adverts at full speed. Virgin’s catch up service doesn’t seem to have fast forward any more - just skip 10 minutes at a time. I don’t have a V+ box, so I can’t comment on that hardware.

I pay for sky so I can fast forward the ads. I'm certainly not going to pay for it if I can't.

Wasn't the idea of "forced" tv ads touted a while back? You can skip through the programme but not the advert or something like that. Anyway, given that I have either my iPhone on me or am at the laptop, I can just switch to the internet.

TBH most tv ads are crap or have no relevance to me. Even the "targetted" tv ads (for my age group) garner no interest purely because I havr no interest. 95% of the time, I buy what I want, when I want. No amount of advertising is going to make me buy something. The 5% of the time, I'm alerted to special offers eg BOGOF on products that I'd buy anyway.

Looking at my last five mainstream purchases, only one was influenced partly by TV: the gilette mach 3 fusion razor. Mainly because I'd run out of blades and figured I'd try it. So far, so crap.

Given that product placement is now allowed and on demand tv is so popular, I can see adverts becoming a thing of the past. It'll all be part of the programming. Whether that's an entirely good thing remains to be seen as the boundaries between advertising and programming will become increasingly blurred.

Yes - something like that was mentioned. I remember a make of video recorder could skip adverts - it detected a spike in the signal which is caused when the broadcast programme is broken and the adverts started. A similar spike showed the end of the ad break. The video deck just marked the tape and could be wound through the break. I had something similar which I made for my video player. I had a programmable handset, and I set a few buttons to wind the tape forward for a certain amount of time - the average time it would take to get through the ads. It was about 90% effective.

There was also the idea that online ads - the really annoying ones that pop up before you get to the content - would start to ask you questions about the presentation, only allowing you forward if you can give a correct answer (and were therefore paying attention). I think blocking Flash may scupper that one.

Also, TNT boss Ted Turner famously once said that if you ignore the adverts, you are effectively stealing the programme. He was quite animated about this point, possibly hoping to shame people into NOT winding through them, going to the loo or making tea.

Adverts are horrible, and I really try to avoid them now. GIven a choice, I watch the BBC and record other channels so I can skip through them.

You'd think having an ad break was like being made to sit next to a plague carrier on your bus journey home. It's a minor inconvenience, really.
I mean, what, 'Oh no, I'm watching some banal messages from a company shilling me artificial fame. And then there's an ad break! FFFUUUUUUUUUuuuuu...'

I also mute them especially if they are loud. They are also a cue for any toilet breaks.