A television commercial (or narrowly called a television advertisement, in English terms television advertisement or television commercial – abbreviated TVad or TVC) is a type of film or segment that is produced, circulated on various mass media or paid for by companies, organizations, or associations who want to promote a message, usually to advertise or promote a product or to campaign and publicize something.
- When did TVCs start? Television advertising was first broadcast in the US at 2:29 PM on July 1, 1942 after commercial advertising on television was approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It was a segment that the Bulova Watch Company paid $9 to the New York City NBC station WNBT for 20 seconds of airtime before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. It was simply a Bulova watch resting on a map of America, with a voice reading the company’s slogan “America runs on Bulova time!”
The first television commercial appeared in Asia, recorded on August 28, 1953 in Tokyo, Japan on Nippon TV and coincidentally this commercial also introduced a watch called Seikosha, which was the later famous Seiko watch brand.
- Impressive numbers about TVCs: According to statistics on online participation and usage from Comscore, 45.5% is the rate of heavy internet users – they watch more than one online video in a month. And on average, users can be exposed to over 30 videos in a month. That means opportunities for marketing messages to reach consumers are increasing. Here are some impressive numbers about commercials:
1.8 million: According to Dr. James McQuivey, there is value of up to 1.8 million words in one minute of video. If on average you can write 1 web page per hour, it would take 150 days of writing to achieve the impact of one minute of video. So investing in building TVCs is not too expensive compared to the value it brings.
100 million: That’s the number of internet users watching online videos every day.
90%: The percentage of online shoppers who admit that helpful video ads aid their shopping decisions.
75%: Executives admit to Forbes magazine that they watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week. Of these, 50% watch business-related videos on YouTube, and 65% visit the marketer’s website after watching a video.
16 minutes and 49 seconds: The average time users spend watching online video ads per month.
80%: Internet users re-watch a video ad from a website they visited 30 days ago. Of these, 46% have taken action after watching the ad.
96%: Emails with videos increased click-through rates by 96%. So there were nearly twice as many people clicking through to your website when your marketing emails contained videos.
10 seconds: The time to capture the audience’s attention in a marketing video. According to a Visible Measures study, 20% of your viewers will click away from a video in 10 seconds or less.
16%: Videos on YouTube are embedded, linked or shared on weekdays between 11am and 1pm.
15 seconds: 15-second or shorter videos are shared more frequently than 30-second videos. The longer the video, the lower the share rate.
Thus, a TVC needs careful investment from concept, content, production to customer approach strategy and of course budget. With the usual duration of 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, incorporating the message, guiding emotions and making an impression on viewers is not an easy task for both the brand and the production company. Let’s take a look at some outstanding TVCs from 2017 to see how brands have transformed themselves in their commercials with XDevLabs
