I found this article, New Tack: Mini Programs in Ad Breaks, online at The Wall Street Journal. It is written by Brian Steinberg and is about a new media trend. To capture viewers attention during Ads, the media giant, Fox network, will put short animated clips about a taxi driver known as "Oleg" during ad breaks.(You can see part of the clip in the link above) Other major broadcast networks, like ABC, NBC, and CBS, are all trying on similar concepts, though Fox's plans seem to be the first one. However, even experts of Ads can't tell whether these ideas will work. For example, the problem of Fox is that the program is too short, comparing to the whole length of the Ads, to stop viewers from changing channel. Moreover, competition from other media makes the TV network more and more hard to survive.

I love creative Ads. In my opinion, I think the essential question is whether the Ads are fun enough. We can see a lot of creative Ads spread not only through TV but also through Internet. In the information age, if the Ads are fantastic enough, the producer can save all his effort to catch the viewers attetion. For example, there was an Ad in Taiwan so famous that the actors in the Ad became stars. It's about a love story and had three episodes. Another example is that a lot of slogans come from Ads. In conclusion, I think the network companies should focus on the "Ad" itself, not on the ways to attract people to watch Ad.

By Darren