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Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

nytimes.com

341–350 of 361 posts

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#341

Im enjoying Hulu/Netflix/Prime Video while I can. My kid has grown up in a household without commercials and where you get points for who can hit “skip” the fastest when one does pop up. Commercials were always annoying but when you aren’t used to seeing them then it really hits home that your seeing the exact same commercial for floor wax sixteen times an hour and the exact same commercial for anti-AIDS drugs sixtee…

> How do you explain that in the era of machine learning and no holds barred privacy invasion?

Google provides a platform for advertisers to use. The sophistication of that usage, however, is up to the marketers actually using it. At a small scale, it's relatively easy to bootstrap the type of integrated infrastructure and execution required for sophisticated campaigns. But at scale, marketing programs require so much people-coordination (between various internal departments and external agencies) that relatively few firms end up in an operationally mature state to attempt to integrate sophisticated technical and data operations as well.

Anecdotally speaking, the morass of font licensing[1] is likely to have an order of magnitude more attention in a typical campaign than something as seemingly critical as the actual ad targeting or frequency caps.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22370372

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#342
post #186

Im enjoying Hulu/Netflix/Prime Video while I can. My kid has grown up in a household without commercials and where you get points for who can hit “skip” the fastest when one does pop up. Commercials were always annoying but when you aren’t used to seeing them then it really hits home that your seeing the exact same commercial for floor wax sixteen times an hour and the exact same commercial for anti-AIDS drugs sixtee…

> the exact same commercial for anti-AIDS drugs sixteen times per hour. European here, I will go over my surprise / weirdness about having ads for chronic disease medication like that, to ask : do you actually, you as the patient, choose which medication you receive for disease like that? Does your opinion override that of the doctor? Is it not ultimately a moot choice both by you and the doctor because the one you w…

> I have a hard time reconciling what (little) I know about in the US medical system between insurance behavior, doctor choice, and ads aimed at patient choice.

As a patient, you don't get to choose what drugs a doctor prescribes to you. But you do get to choose (to an extent) your doctor. So if you ask a doctor about a particular prescription, and it's within the sphere of treatment options they would evaluate for you, then they'll usually give you that option. If for no other reason than to pacify you and prevent you from doctor shopping until one does give it to you.

To that end, medical marketing tends to work twofold: a salesforce focused on "educating" doctors on a particular medication, and patient advertising to get patients requesting it more. Doctors tend to have a go-to grab bag of treatment options they're familiar with and tend to prescribe, so both of these work to accelerate how quickly a particular new blockbuster gets its way onto that shortlist for any particular doctor.

Insurance companies, traditionally, operate as a backstop to prevent this from going overboard. Since they act as payor for both the physician and prescription, if they deny claims it can impede uptake. So they can put in place things like documentation requirements, prior authorization[1], and prescription formularies. That said, components of the Affordable Care Act (i.e. Obamacare) capped the profitability of insurance companies as a percentage of total revenue. Which doesn't really reconcile with trying to reign in costs, as runaway medical spending just means runaway premiums they can justify charging, and the absolute value of their percentage-based cap goes up.

[1] https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=4...

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#343

Im enjoying Hulu/Netflix/Prime Video while I can. My kid has grown up in a household without commercials and where you get points for who can hit “skip” the fastest when one does pop up. Commercials were always annoying but when you aren’t used to seeing them then it really hits home that your seeing the exact same commercial for floor wax sixteen times an hour and the exact same commercial for anti-AIDS drugs sixtee…

They should be showing you ads for YouTube Red if their algorithm was really sophisticated lol

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A word cloud of nonesense The same could be easily said about your comments here, comparing "redistribution of wealth" to genocide.

Not a comparison, an observation. Those societies which tried to create prosperity by redistribution, found there is in fact too little to redistribute. And indeed, therefore, engaged in mass murder to deal with that scarcity. The same holds today. The GDP of the planet, distributed to all its population is a one-off 20k USD. Not enough wealth for almost anything. Wealth is about producing over time, and increasing g…

> Not enough wealth for almost anything.

That is absolute bullshit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993157

"2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees."

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#345
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devil's advocate... doctors are neither omniscient nor perfect. > Shouldn't my doctor morally and by default be suggesting the best treatment for what I have? Shouldn't programmers by default be suggesting the best algorithm/programming language/design patterns for the problem at hand? In a perfect world, yes. But we live in an imperfect world where sub-optimal choices are made due to time constraints, lack o…

> Shouldn't programmers by default be suggesting the best algorithm/programming language/design patterns for the problem at hand? In a perfect world, yes. But we live in an imperfect world where sub-optimal choices are made due to time constraints, lack of knowledge/experience, etc. I don't understand. Are you saying you frequently have non-technical customers of your software business asking for specific languages,…

This happens all the time with "buzzword trends" more so than specific languages/frameworks. Does your product have "big data / AI / ML / IoT / blockchain" etc ...

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first goal of drug advertising is to define a category and convince people they have a disorder that no one had ever heard of before. Viagra invented "erectile disfunction" and went on to make billions of dollars, and an industry was born.

So in this context you are saying that HIV is a disorder that was invented by advertisers in order to sell anti-virals? Do you have any evidence to substantiate that(or your claim that ED is not a clinical condition?)

I read that in a way "invented" is usually used (esp due to use of "define a category"): someone was the first to do it. Not as in "it's an imaginary thing".

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay the $10~ per month for premium and get rid of the ads. Many people here on hn complain about the ads but are unwilling to pay to support non ad version at the same time.

They're starting to creep into premium now too. I have Google play music which includes YouTube premium, just checked YouTube on my phone and it immediately showed an advert, even though I'm signed in.

Are you sure your subscription includes YT Premium? This isn't a given.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for the premium version and there are still some ads.

I was going to sign up for premium, I don't think I'll bother if it does work.

Well, serving high-definition video isn't free. If you watch a lot of YouTube, have an adblocker, and don't pay for Premium, that would make you a freeloader.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#349
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, what shocked me in the UK was the amount of ads for sports gambling. Literally every commercial during games was for a betting site. It felt pretty gross.

You're right, it's shocking, although I think it's mainly during sports (which sports nerds already pay a fortune for to subscribe to sky sports / bt sport). The vast majority of TV viewing in the UK is on BBC, amazon prime, netflix or disney plus, and thus doesn't contain commercials, just adverts for other shows from the same provider. The rest of the stuff is mainly aimed at old people sat at home - visited my nan…

That doesn't sound so dissimilar to the US :)

Ads during the day are either for old people or stay at home moms.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#350
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, what shocked me in the UK was the amount of ads for sports gambling. Literally every commercial during games was for a betting site. It felt pretty gross.

The only reason sports gambling isn't as big (or bigger) in the US is due to a historical aversion to gambling (thinly veiled piety in government), and because Major league sports orgs are still figuring out how to get the most money out of it.

Sports gambling is now quite large in states that have allowed it since the SCOTUS case a year or so ago. Still not a lot of TV ads though, more web advertising.
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