An ABC/ESPN experiment for its Indy auto racing coverage that provides a split screen during national commercials is a success, at least from the perspective of this TiVo user and commercial skipper.Called "Side-By-Side," the technique splits the screen into parts, with the commercial itself taking the majority of the right side of the screen, as well as the audio. The live, albeit silent, Indy race is in a smaller window on the left side (you can see this in the screenshot to the right).
The top of the screen includes more information, including the name of the company whose commercial is running at that moment. The top three race leaders also are listed on the top of the screen, in addition to the current lap.
The whole point, of course, is to keep you from changing channels. But what about when you've TiVo'ed the race? Does it help keep viewers from fast-forwarding through the commercials?
I recorded the Bombardier LearJet 500 race on Saturday and I watched it on Sunday. I didn't use the magical 30-second commercial skip because I might miss a good crash (which is the reason most of us watch, no?).
The side-by-side split is such interesting eye candy that it keeps me watching -- both the race and the commercial. The only caveat is that the race window is pretty small. Maybe advertisers in the future will agree to split the screen equally with the programming. I'm sure the advertisers will never cede the audio to the programming, though.
(On Bloomberg Television, for example, commercials consume less than half of the TV screen's real estate, as they must share space with news headlines, stock tickers and other information. As far as I know, Bloomberg was the first TV network to ever do this.)
It's these kind of innovative advertising techniques that will ultimately prosper in a crowded and PVR-filled world. If the experiment is successful, as it seems to be, we may see this spread to other sports, like golf, that don't have natural (or even artificial) commercial breaks like baseball and football do.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-15-2005 @ 11:55AM
chicadelatele said...
In Spain, the TV which holds the rights for the Formula 1 races (Telecinco) has been doing this since last year. They had to stop doing it for about a month because of some problems with the actual Formula 1 rights holders, but they went back to doing it after a couple of races and now it's up and running. It's a great idea, not only for viewers not missing a thing, but also for advertisers, because you keep watching or at least hearing the commercials (I guess they will increase the information given in the audio for these particular spots).
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6-15-2005 @ 11:55AM
MattS said...
ESPN2 has been doing this with the MLS all season. I feel that it disrupts the game a little bit and it would still be effective on the smaller half of the screen. Your attention is always going to go to where the audio is, so the size of the ad shouldn't matter. I didn't see the Indy race but I would imaging that during a race it wouldn't interfere as much as it would in a soccer match. Last week a goal was scored during the ad.
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6-15-2005 @ 11:55AM
Brian said...
I have been watching the IRL all season, I like the split-screen, the only race that was not shown with split-screen was the Indy 500, other than that every race had the feature. It works... keep going. I wish NASCAR would use it. It should be a standard for all racing.
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