I hate teasers

Teasers are those lousy, misleading sound bites and headlines that are designed specifically to entice you to stay tuned or click a link only to be disappointed by the lack of substance that follows.

News shows used to be the worst by stating things like 'research shows that most homes contain an item in your kitchen that could make you very sick and possibly kill you.  We'll let you know what it is after this break' and then they cut to a commercial and you can't wait for them to get back only to learn that if you have the same sponge sitting on your sink for the past 13 months that it might grow some bacteria that might not be the best for you...duh.

The practice has grown beyond any semblance of sensibility on the web.  Sites like MSN and Yahoo have taken this to a whole new level of ridiculous and then they double down with their advertising links from the likes of Taboola.  (By the way if you see any advertisement by Taboola I suggest that you ignore it completely and do not click it even if you think it might be legit as I have never, ever found anything of value associated with them.)  They use titles that sound like something but are really nothing.  They are designed to draw you in but never deliver.  The term for this is click bait.

Yes click bait, just like the bait you find on a hook used to lure a fish to latch on and lose its life thus becoming someone elses' dinner.

They always take a popular subject (and there is always something to choose from) and allude to the possibility of having some new information about said subject or update about your fan favorites.  And then you sucker in only to realize that the only purpose they had was to sucker you in.  The web site they link to may have something to do with said subject (but many times it does not) because the real intent is to overwhelm the viewer with ads in the hope of getting the viewer to act on the ads or at the very least expose you to even more ads.

Even though the percentage of views that actually convert to a buy are probably very, very small it must still be profitable because we continue to be exposed to so much of it.  The cost to load millions upon millions of these ads is less than the revenue they see from their efforts or they wouldn't bother.

And there is a lot of them bothering with it.  It feels like 99% of all these ads are of this nature.  (I am pretty sure it is only 98.9% but I don't have the statistics to prove it.)  And you wonder why we have gotten so good at ignoring ads, whatever they are or wherever come from.

It amazes me that the advertising industry can be this big and spend so much money and have so little concern for their customers or reputations of the companies they represent.  It is so hard to find quality or excellence in advertising on the internet, print or broadcast let alone memorable moments or anything worthy of water cooler discussions.

Even when we want to like and talk about ads and try to make them a main topic of focus as big as the event they are tied to such as the Super Bowl, where the biggest and brightest culminate all their skill and effort into creating the hoped for viral adoration of millions to justify their fees, we can still be disappointed.

As someone who enjoys and prefers the advertising driven content over the paid subscription business model, I am left wondering what the future will bring.  I believe that the volume of advertising to content has driven much of the subscription market where you pay for the content to be ad free.  We have gone from a show that was sponsored by a company that mentioned the sponsors name in the show to a few well spaced and placed ad interruptions but with the majority of the shows hour being content, and now having longer and more frequent interruptions where the content barely covers the majority of the hour.  When a 96 minute movie takes 3 hours of broadcast time you know something is messed up.  No wonder TiVo became so popular with it's ability to skip ahead past the commercials.

And if the quality of the commercials continues to fall off across the board, then you know a vacuum will develop and that means opportunities for those who are willing to offer an alternative to fill that vacuum.  You see it happening already when you see how many have left local radio for internet and satellite broadcast and the big move from cable to internet sourced TV.

The content has to be pretty incredible to overcome what advertisement is doing to it.  That is asking a lot given the current state of programming.  Changes are coming and I am hoping for good things to come from it.  Actually I am counting on it.  I am always looking for a better way.  Let's hope we get it.  This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.