Growing up, I remember the commercials that reverberated at our dinner table and throughout the wider culture. If you’re too young to remember “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” “Where’s the beef?” and “I’d like to teach the world to sing” (before it was a coda on Mad Men), you missed an era where :30 could stop the world. Or, at least, the dinner conversation.

Today, we’re no longer captive audiences with limited viewing options, starved for entertainment, information and the need to know how to make our whites whiter. In fact, we have an overabundance of all of those things, which is why it’s time for television advertising – like other traditional forms before it – to evolve to a new, consumer-centric paradigm.

With the proliferation of content, unlimited choices force consumers to become pickier about the advertising they choose to engage with. And perhaps no messaging vehicle is less relevant today than the good old :30 spot. Driven by the anti-consumerist sentiments of millennials (but not limited to them), and the immediate gratification we get from digital media, the :30 and the related commercial break are artifacts from a bygone media age. Here’s why.

NO INTERRUPTIONS PLEASE

Back before we had the ability to pause our content at will, we relied on commercials as time to attend to biological and other needs. But now we like our content radically immersive, often binged, and revel in the feeling of being tossed down the rabbit hole of Westeros, pre-war England or the halls of Congress. The last thing we want is to be yanked out of these richly detailed worlds to be sold something – especially something we don’t want or need.

Some networks are capitalizing on this longing by extending their content into the commercial break. Spike’s Lip Sync Battle recently created a native spot for Sauza tequila that played like a natural continuation of the show – adding value for the advertiser and viewer, while retaining eyeballs for the network: Win-Win-Win. I can envision a day soon when the entire commercial pod is laden with native content with multiple advertisers, and honestly, I’m excited for that.

CONTEXT IS KING

Today, viewers are multi-platform media consumers who move seamlessly through devices all day long. So like me, you’ve probably noticed how your favorite e-tailers seem to follow you around wherever you go on the web. And while it can be annoying (I don’t need another pair of those shoes I just bought, thank you) at least it’s accurate – unlike TV. Now that we’ve gotten used to targeted, “smart” ads being served up daily via digital, :30 spots seem quaintly blind to who they’re reaching. And as with content, the more generic and broadly appealing the ad is (Please like me!), the more easily it’s ignored.

Bravo has done a good job of integrating their hardworking reality stars into ads for Tomorrowland and even sister NBCU shows (The Royals on E!). It’s fun for viewers to watch your favorite Bravolebrity in another context, yet still be themselves, and furthers their brand image as a cultural curator – like a recommendation engine for fans.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Another viewing expectation that digital content has shifted is that of length: things are as long as they need to be. Some stories can be told in six seconds, others in six minutes. There is no “clock” in digital. So a thirty second spot can seem both inordinately long and prematurely concluded, depending on the ad.

We’ve seen content creators shift to different lengths (Adult Swim’s fifteen minutes shows are experimental in more ways than one); can networks find creative ways to support non-standard lengths?

COLLABORATE OR DIE

One sure way to get viewers’ fickle attention is to get them emotionally invested in the spot. Social media has enabled some companies to do a great job of enlisting consumer ideas and opinions in conversations about their brands or values. I call this “indirect marketing.”

HBO NOW recently promoted their OTT app via Twitter. But instead of tweeting out their higher-than-average offering of $19.99 a month, some smart person calculated that actually worked out to be 68¢ a day. Rather than saying that, they asked:

What can you buy for 68¢ a day?

Hmmm. Practically nothing. Which makes their deal sound like a pretty good one. By making viewers think about – not just receive – messaging they’re able to get into the consideration set. How can television advertising invite or reflect a 2-way conversation, instead of just marketing at viewers?

SELF-AWARENESS HELPS

Lastly, perhaps the best way to market to an audience resistant to marketing is to acknowledge how useless the medium is. GEICO did a great job of this recently with their “unskippable” :05 spots, which were impossible to stop watching, and went well beyond the bounds of time and reason (one clocked in at :37, another at 1:05), which is why I love them (and share them often).

Look, I know a lot of folks make a living off of :30 spots. And as both a former agency art director and network on-air writer/producer, some of my own favorite work includes :30 ads and promos. So I’m not saying any of this lightly. But it’s time for it to go. And if television can make advertising a creative, collaborative, contextual, continuous and complicit experience, we might all want to watch it again. I sure would.

TruthCo. is a cultural branding and insights company, headed by CEO Linda Ong, that analyzes the current cultural landscape to deliver actionable recommendations that keep entertainment brands and their offerings relevant.

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