[swallman]

I noticed something new on Dish tonight that I've never noticed before. I was watching TBS on a local (Wisconsin state) political ad came on. I was just wondering how they are managing to insert that into the feed and just target select subs ?

I then backed up to watch the ad again and the ad didn't even show! Instead the DVR recorded a 1 minute Dish network generic ad.

Very interesting...

 

[Stewart Vernon]

Something about what you said can't be true.

IF you were watching TBS (the national channel) then any inserted ad would be there for the whole country, not just for you. Dish doesn't have a way to target like that.

Then... there's no way a different commercial could be on the DVR than the one you saw. It's just not possible.

 

[swallman]

I'm wondering if they could possibly have downloaded it ahead of time to my DVR and then triggered it to display in place of the Dish commercial ??

Guess I need to watch some more TBS to see if it happens again...

 

[Don M]

I have noticed local political commercials on USA and SyFi the past few days.

 

[Stewart Vernon]

I'm going to backtrack and eat my words...

I thought about ways it *could* be done, but didn't really think Dish was doing it... and then I found this article:

http://adage.com/article/media/dish-group-m-step-closer-addressable-advertising/236085/

"In a first for the TV industry,Dish Network and WPP's Group M said they have delivered household addressable advertising nationally in trials with 10 major advertisers to more than 7 million Dish subscribers."

Apparently both Dish and DirecTV are using this... and basically it involves pre-downloaded commercials stored on the DVR and then inserted during live TV viewing.

What's curious, to me, is how you did not see the ad when you backed up.. that suggests it might also not have shown you the ad if you had recorded the program to watch later. I would expect this to be a "bug" that early testing would reveal and they would want to make sure that the commercial was inserted in recorded or paused programs as well.

I learned something new today.

 

[James Long]

I learned something new today.

Yes, you have!

The inserted ads exist and in normal play blend in fairly well with the "live streamed" programming. But there have been rare cases when I've hit the back button to see what the ad was about and saw a different ad that was covered up on initial viewing.

Targeted ads exist.

As far as playback in recorded programming I try to skip all ads. But I believe the trigger is recorded and if one were to allow the break to play normally the inserted ad would play just as if one was watching "live". If one skips back to the beginning of the break the inserted commercial can be triggered again.

 

[garys]

I was told by someone in my household (I myself have not noticed this), it seems one commercial was inserted during the actual program and not over a different commercial. While I may have seen inserted commercials, something I don't really check back on, if the commercials start messing with viewing the actual program is something that shouldn't be tolerated.

 

[swallman]

I was told by someone in my household (I myself have not noticed this), it seems one commercial was inserted during the actual program and not over a different commercial. While I may have seen inserted commercials, something I don't really check back on, if the commercials start messing with viewing the actual program is something that shouldn't be tolerated.

That I find pretty hard to believe...if it did happen it was probably not supposed to. I have seen some odd commercial splices that have happened on other shows - probably a glitch in the system...

 

[garys]

Not sure as I did not see it myself and person who did was watching tv due to not being able to sleep and was tired. I just want to check if anyone else noticed anything such as this.

 

[Michael P]

I was told by someone in my household (I myself have not noticed this), it seems one commercial was inserted during the actual program and not over a different commercial. While I may have seen inserted commercials, something I don't really check back on, if the commercials start messing with viewing the actual program is something that shouldn't be tolerated.

A few years ago the HD feed of certain NBA games from RSN's would get Dish inserted ads in the middle of free throws :nono: I had to switch to the SD feed quickly to see the action. I complained about it at the time.

 

[runner861]

This is political season. Obama and Romney want to spend their money buying ads in the swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio and Florida. They don't want to waste money buying ads in California, Texas, or New York. So that is an example of the need for targeted advertising. Politicians and other advertisers can buy targeted spots on national programs and better spend their money, at least in their minds. This also puts satellite companies on the same level with cable companies, where targeted advertising on national programs has been available for decades.

 

[Jaspear]

What's curious, to me, is how you did not see the ad when you backed up.. that suggests it might also not have shown you the ad if you had recorded the program to watch later. I would expect this to be a "bug" that early testing would reveal and they would want to make sure that the commercial was inserted in recorded or paused programs as well.

If the advertiser specifically requested live only insertion, then that's all they would get, would they not? Or maybe 'live only' is all Dish currently sells. Either way, it wouldn't be a bug.

 

[nmetro]

You probably did. COMCAST is already doing this. Other providers will soon be doing this. DISH already lets ads get replaced, though thye are national in scope. But, coming to a VIP near you will be ads delivered by zip code. Also, based upon one's deomographics and consumer infromation, these ads may get even more targeted.

 

[swallman]

Just saw the same ad again, this time on CNN. I waited until the ad was completely finished and went backwards and the ad that was replaced was a Dish network ad. Would be interesting to see what happens if I backup in the middle of the ad.

 

[dlt]

Yea, they surely have the tech. to place ads, but not to local weather like Comcast does.

 

[James Long]

Yea, they surely have the tech. to place ads, but not to local weather like Comcast does.

Comcast can interrupt the feed at the head end and serve an entire community. It is a harder to do that on millions of individual boxes getting forecasts for hundreds of different areas.

The ads work because they can be downloaded days in advance ... or at least the night before. If you want a weathercast recorded last night the ad tech can provide one. An up to the hour video forecast would require taking away one of your tuners for a download. (Or creating slides from a data feed if it was not live video.)

It is different technology.

 

[ljr01]

After my 722 downloaded the 725 update I noticed entries in the "invidi" section of diagnostics -> counters that I'd never seen before. A few searches led me to some references to local advertising I didn't completely understand.

Is this related?