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Ask HN: Have TV ads changed?

28 points by ushakov ↗ HN
i don't know why, but recently many TV ads give me an uncanny feeling

every other ad is what i would describe as "dancing happy diverse young people in colourful clothes"

when i'm watching TV ads i feel like i'm watching a corporate-monster version TikTok

the difference is with TikTok this is the content, but with TV ads it isn't even clear what the product they are advertising

how effective is the "dancing happy teenagers in colourful clothes" strategy in TV ads? teenagers typically don't watch TV

have you noticed this with TV ads in your country?

41 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] thread
Vladimof
You are doing it wrong if you are still watching ads... or cable for that matter
ushakov
i'm not watching neither ads nor TV on purpose

so your comment isn't helpful

midasuni
So why are you watching them?Research?
ushakov
sir, if i'm watching ads, than this is accidental

either way why are you so concerned?

Gerito
I can understand the op poster as I'm also not even able to come across tv ads anymore.

It's quite interesting whenever we are at my parents place, watching ads is quite interesting experience.

Very odd and annoying.

Adraghast
Many public places have TVs playing for the benefit of patrons/employees.
Vladimof
Usually the volume is very low if not muted with captions... just watch your phone
dazc
> '...it isn't even clear what the product they are advertising'

Not noticed the TikTok influence so much in the UK yet but this satement certainly rings true.

I think advertisers, like the media, are suffering a severe disconnect from the people they are broadcasting to. Over here a common theme is portraying the average family as mixed race despite the fact that the vast majority of UK families are not mixed race at all.

I don't believe anyone takes much offence from this but it has become something of a running joke.

ushakov
yeah, Google even went one step further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxERxFXPw3M

on thing i cannot understand though is why do they need to constantly keep the ads running

if you're Coca-Cola, mostly everybody in the world already knows what you're offering

why spend millions on ads?

dmd
Why do you think Coca-Cola dominates culture vs. your local store brand?
ushakov
is the point you're trying to make, that they need to run more ads than everybody else in order to dominate?
Gerito
Every new generation needs to be reminded of it.

The coca cola Christmas ad is well known I would say.

Brands can disappear much quicker than people think. Remember Nokia or blackberry

Blackberry was the thing for business people.

inglor_cz
Yes, but the chain of events was different. People missed Nokia and Blackberry. Some still do. It is not as if Nokia and BB started putting less ads out and people began to forget them. They lost the technological race; something that doesn't apply to Coca Cola.
Gerito
It was a more generic example how fast it can go.
dmd
Yes. You're basically saying the equivalent of "why keep painting the bridge, I've never seen it rust!"

That's WHY you've never seen it rust.

iamevn
I'm confused about what Google took a step further, is it that there are queer people present in the ad?
rchaud
> Over here a common theme is portraying the average family as mixed race despite the fact that the vast majority of UK families are not mixed race at all.

It's cheaper to run 1 ad instead of two, to capture 2 demographics. In America, a mixed-race cereal commercial caused an uproar around 10 or so years ago. You wouldn't have thought so, but family representations on TV that veer from majority culture status quo appear to be a sore point for some.

swatcoder
The short answer is that some algorithm somewhere thinks that you’ll respond to ads produced in that style.

Since most ad placement is profiled and personalized now, we’re all likely to see a different pattern of ads. That doesn’t just mean seeing different products advertised, but different styles used in those advertisements.

And failing useful profiles, the ads will reflect the expected demographic of what content you’re watching and how you’re accessing it.

And given all that, we shouldn’t be surprised that there are many agencies and clients saying “we want to reach those TikTok kids! Let’s ape that style in our own sterile, corporatized way”

Who knows whether that’s an effective strategy or just an experiment that’ll burn off or tune up after a while. It’s doubtful anybody will share real data about it here.

Personally, I only very rarely see the style of ads you’re talking about.

ushakov
TV is watched by many audiences, but teenagers aren't it

so, why put an ad designed for teenagers on a platform that teenagers don't consume?

> Personally, I only very rarely see the style of ads you’re talking about.

i have very different experience in Germany

take Bauhaus for example, they straight up show TikTok videos on TV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nV1OPEFUCk

swatcoder
> TV is watched by many audiences, but teenagers aren't it > so, why put an ad designed for teenagers on a platform that teenagers don't consume?

Have you considered that your assumptions are flawed?

- Maybe enough “teenagers” see TV for these fairly low-production-cost ads to pay off.

- Maybe these videos appeal to older demographics that want to feel more connected with youth culture

- Maybe TikTok appeals to a broad demographic itself, and isn’t strictly “for teenagers”

- Maybe it’s an experiment that’ll take a couple years to play out

- Maybe advertising isn’t maximally efficient

etc

If you’re this confused about why something widespread is happening, a good place to look first are your own assumptions

ushakov
thanks for the write-up!

i'm not in the media advertising business, so i'm glad you opened my eyes on these aspects too

personally, i'd like to believe the reason we have these weird ads is that companies want to show they are "trendy" but they ridiculously, in a way desperately over-express it

"See: we're all cool, diverse, dancing, happy. Why aren't you buying our products?"

elipsey
>> most ad placement is profiled and personalized now

wow, really? you mean like on cable, different cable boxes fill the ad time slots with different targeted ads for different people?

(sorry if i'm being dense, i've never had my own cable)

midasuni
I haven’t noticed many tv adverts at all - the last one I think I saw live was during the England vs Croatia in July 2018 which was sadly on ITV instead of BBC. I don’t remember much more.

I also tuned in on YouTube to watch the superbowl adverts (there was one with skeletor and heman), and I tend to watch the big budget Christmas adverts on YouTube at the start of December

I guess next adverts will be in December if England get through to the last 16 and the game is on ITV.

el-salvador
I haven't watched US TV since the last World Cup, but...

Could it be that they are using the same style of stock footage?

Dissolve - Authentically Yours

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GcjPKdsapTM

Dissolve - Generic Millennial Add

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KG_i7oWzTyU

ushakov
wow, thanks for the links!

"This Is a Generic Millennial Ad" totally hits the spot!

jmrm
I find funny how "millennials" are a way of describing people in their early 20s when millennials have between 27 to 41 years old. It doesn't stop to surprise me how older generations misuse that word.
el-salvador
The Generic Millennial Ad went viral just 4 years ago.

I was surprised that the ad is starting to look dated now.

Gen Z fashion is way different. It looks more like the video of the first link on my parent post.

Not only fashion but also the color grading applied to the videos. Many recent videos now use way more pink and magenta tones. And also perhaps camera lens set up is different, different focus length I think

dumpsterdiver
When you consider that it’s 40 year olds disavowing their inclusion as millennials, it becomes pretty clear that they really are an entire generation apart. People who “should have been in generation X” do not want to be lumped in with the social media addicts that comprise younger adults today.
jasode
>every other ad is what i would describe as "dancing happy diverse young people in colourful clothes" [...] , but with TV ads it isn't even clear what the product they are advertising

That type of advertising using "abstract visuals" has been going on for decades. It's basically what some call "aspirational lifestyle" type of advertising.

I wrote some previous comments about that particular type of aspirational communication style that deliberately avoids mentioning concrete details:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034558

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877422

rchaud
One of the more famous quotes on advertising is "people don't buy products, they buy better versions of themselves".

Budweiser hasn't changed in ages. You aren't going to buy one on the basis of just seeing a picture, but you might if you saw an image of friends around a campfire that happens to feature Budweiser.

That's because the next time you find yourself at the store needing to choose a drink, looking at aisle shelves may not help you make a decision. The campfire image however may appear in your mind when you see the Bud logo. And that image might determine whether you buy or not.

vmception
teenagers don't watch tv but toddlers and younger children that want to emulate teenagers watch tv, because their parents have cable or re-subscribed to cable

a lot of children in a structured household get brief doses of unguided tiktok and social media due to parental controls, and the things they do see they want more of it

it kind of filters for those kinds of families, which typically have other forms of stability to accomplish structure, which means money.

ftyers
Many of the ones I see in airport bars in the US are for prescription drugs and go something like "do _you_ have metastatic breast cancer? ask your physician about cibrofambuloxivin" [graphics of a woman looking sad and then afterwards walking on a beach, also some extremely impossible to read small print] ...
noahbrier
To the general question “have ads changed?” Yes. The style of ads generally evolve to match the time. Some of this is because the industry learns what’s effective and some is because trends and aesthetics change. In the 80s there were a lot of jingles and characters in ads, which you see much less of now. In the late 90s/early 2000s Apple started to include pop songs and the rest of the industry followed suit.

As to whether this is an effective strategy, it’s hard to say without knowing the specifics of the ad and the business, but as a rule for an ad to be effective it needs to be noticed and you need to connect it with the brand, so if it’s not accomplishing that it probably isn’t delivering on its intention (though it’s also possible that you’re not the target and if you were it would deliver). FWIW, I pretty strongly suspect that there’s too much sameness in the aesthetics and that’s hurting effectiveness. https://whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/why-is-this-inte...

A few books if you want more on commercials and mass advertising: - https://www.amazon.com/How-Brands-Grow-What-Marketers/dp/151... - https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Humbug-Think-Differently-Adve... - https://www.amazon.com/Seducing-Subconscious-Psychology-Emot...

notduncansmith
My guess is that the advertising industry has stratified and now the advertisers are rarely self-producing content. Now they just buy stock footage from content producers and add narration, text, music, done. All of these can be sourced from marketplaces and put together cheaply, a consistent process making for a steady stream of content with varying degrees of blandness.
rchaud
On the Cooking Channel, I often see ads that say "Don't get up! Just point your phone at the screen to go to the link". The ad is by Adam and Eve, an adult toy store. I certainly haven't seen those types of QR-code focused commercials before.

I say "often" because it seems like the Cooking Channel has a very small ad business, as this ad plays constantly in between ads for Discovery+.

jmrm
I believe they are targeted to people between 35 to 55 years old, because they are not selling a product, they are selling the sensation of being young.
thenerdhead
Read Jerry Mander. Not much has really changed here.

TV ads may give you weird feelings, but they still get the ad implanted in your head.

What worries me personally is that the casual nature of ads being sponsored on individual's accounts on TikTok is more alarming. It's like we welcome these implanted messages like it's normal, and in fact it's so faux because those creators need money to survive too.

Do also pay attention to the emotions behind each ad, they are usually very uplifting for something very tragic or something very dark for something that's not even a problem to begin with.

Advertisers don't have to do much work anymore when they can pawn off their dirty work to people with established followings shilling product they themselves will never use.

mickelsen
I remember how TV ads were in Japan back in 2015, they pretty much remind me of tiktok today. Very quick, jumpy transitions and over the top acting compared to stuff in the west. Seemed also pretty common in South Korea at the time.

Vivid, more contrasting colors also made their way in line with today's flat design interfaces in consumer apps, but that seems common everywhere and I guess it was in reaction to the overuse of the hipster faux-vintage aesthetic.

It seems also that some companies have taken cues from the fashion world, seeing the way tv ads storylines are executed now.