The era of OTT is here and this year boosted every single OTT platform to play their top games. From releasing original series and movies, the OTT platforms even received the honor to directly release various movies that were meant for theatrical releases. There has also been a shift from the world of TV to this giant universe of OTT, people of all ages are rushing towards these streaming platforms as they are getting better and more amazing content than there is on our TV channels at the moment. but one thing that people most definitely like about OTT platforms and streaming their content is the “no ad” or “minimal ad” policy.
Advertisements during our TV days were one of the biggest hurdles while we wanted to binge watch something. Whenever we came to an interesting point, they would just cut off and go straight into a break and that starts the unending war of time and ads. When you feel like you have been watching an ad for literally an hour, it actually probably is just a minute. That’s how irritating ads have been, but thanks to OTT we don’t have to deal with it. Even though we face ads on certain platforms, we can directly just go to the “skip ad” or “cross” button and get over it. It has become easy for us now to handle the ads. But do you think that ads would get over that easily? Absolutely no.
Brands that earlier had ad segments that went on in between our shows and movies have now moved on to be a part of these shows and movies. Earlier we didn’t see much of the branding in the scenes, either those were blurred or taped up but now we see clear shots of the products that the actors are using, the cars that they are driving, the phones they are using, and sometimes even the coffee they put while they work in the scenes are highlighted. That’s how the brands are promoting themselves. Not only this, there are instances where the actors are seen mentioning certain brands in their dialogues itself. This indirectly promotes the brand.
There have been instances in the past where in some certain movies and series scenes, an actor mentions certain brands, and that is taken up by the media team of the brand and promotes the scene. Here, not only is the brand being promoted but also the show or the movie is being promoted, which in technical terms is called, “product placement”.
Other than that, there is also “surrogate advertising” which is very commonly seen in today’s shows and movies. This is the advertising of products that require either an age restricted audience or is totally banned from advertising itself. This type of advertisement is normally seen in the scenes when there is a certain alcohol or cigarettes that grab the attention.
Either way, definitely advertisement isn’t going anywhere for sure but now with the time and age, they have adapted to the changes around them and have put themselves in this completely new generation where things are flowing differently for everyone. This is helping them in still being a part of the game.