History and Development of TV Adverts

Television advertisements are a span of televisions programming produced and paid by organization that try and promote a product in a certain market. The revenue produced by advertisement organization provides a significant portion of the funding for most privately owned television networks. Most televisions advertisement can last up to a couple of seconds or up to a minute long depending on the advert trying to be promoted.  

The first television advertisement was broadcast in the United States of America in 1941 on the 1^st of July. The watchmaker who created the advertisement paid $9 for a placement and to show the ad before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The advertising spot of 20 seconds shown a picture of a clock superimposed on a map of the United States, accompanied with a voice-over stating “America runs on Bulova time”.

 Starting on the 2^nd of January in 1971, advertisements featuring cigarettes were banned on American Televisions channels, however alcohol products were still allowed to be advertised. The alcohol products were only allowed to show the product but not the consumption of any alcohol product.  

In the United Kingdom, the broadcasting channel ITV was the first channel to have television advertisement. The advertisement was on the 21^st of September in 1955 and was advertising Gibbs SR toothpaste. Up until the 1990s, television advertisement had only been affordable to large companies which were willing to make a significant investment, but now the advert of desktop video have allowed small and local businesses to produce televisions advertising for local cable TV services. In the United Kingdom, the British Broadcasting Corporation is funded by TV licence and doesn’t screen adverts apart from its own. The amount airtime allowed for commercial channels is about 7 minute’s pre hour which limits the amount of footage lost of a TV programme by 12 minutes.

Sky Media TV is one of the biggest television companies in the United Kingdom and the world. Sky has over 60 advertising deals across more than 40 channels to help promote products for large and small companies across the world. Sky has had a relationship with Coca-Cola since 1989 with a broadcast sponsorship which was one of the first broadcasts for Sky. Sky had played a big part in helping to promote products/brands and re-positioning brand values through sponsorship with the companies. With the sponsorship Sky has, they can help transform a business which could have been having finical problems or are just looking to reach out to a new audience.

Sky TV has development a new means of Television by creating Sky+, which the viewer can pause live TV and record. Also the viewer has the ability to fast forward record programmes. This is bad for advertising companies because the advertisements will not be seen by the viewer and the company who makes the adverts will be losing money because of it. Also with Sky+, they have created a new type of TV guide which shows programme that were on earlier in the week or new films, but with a twist  because the whole programme or film has no adverts throughout, only a couple of minutes at the start which can also be fast forward.

• What I have learned from this research:
• I have learned that. many of todays adverts are anything up to 30 seconds to a minute long. Knowing this gives me an target when making and editing my advert and how long to have it.