Ray’s Rants of the Week

This is quite the “co-inky-dink” that this post dealing with advertisements is being published on Super Bowl Sunday😂🤯…

It used to be back in the day that you’d watch a show on TV, or a game, or any program, for that matter. Unless you were on a cable movie channel (HBO, Cinemax, etc.), you had to deal with commercials. Those annoying ads that divided up your favorite program.

Once upon a time, TV commercials were few and far between. Just a couple of minutes, then you enjoyed most of your program. Networks didn’t need a whole lot of advertising revenue, so commercials were few. Today, in a half-hour program block, you might be lucky to get 20 minutes of your show. It seems like they run every couple of minutes. Hell, TV shows seems to be built and shot and designed around the commercials. They’re like built-in cliffhanger points. Annoying points of suspense. Radio seems to be worse. You get one, MAYBE two songs, then there’s five minutes of ads. And it seems like every radio station plays their ads at the same time. You can’t get around it.

Then there’s the internet: YouTube, Facebook, whatever social media platform. At one time, you could enjoy your experience uninterrupted. Since these social media outfits got seemingly too big for their own britches, they’ve inserted ads. YouTube places ads before almost every video—some you can skip after 5 seconds, others make you wait the whole. fucking. time. Sometimes as long as 30 seconds. They make you endure the whole goddamned ad before you can see your video. And then, depending on length, they’ll insert ads in the middle of the video! How. Fucking. Annoying. At least on Twitter and Instagram, they might have an ad, or what they call “sponsored posts”, but they give you the option of hiding them, and giving feedback as to why you’re hiding them (my response is almost always “see too many times” or “not relevant”). Facebook has to be one of the worst—maybe not as bad as YouTube🤷‍♂️. Anyway, you see a video on Facebook, be it a Family Feud clip, or a Tasty or NowThis video. You’re watching, interested. Suddenly, in the corner, the dreaded words “Ad appearing soon…” show up. Your video stops, and a fucking ad plays. Sometimes a couple of seconds, sometimes as long as 30. You choose to skip. It asks why. I always reply with “I don’t like ads in videos”. Then Facebook pauses the ad for 7 seconds, with the message that [insert company name here] inserted an ad break “to make money”. Then let them find another freaking way to make money! What? They can’t afford the Facebook advertising rates? I mean, on my “Ray’s Rants of the Week” Facebook page (yes, that was a shameless plug🤯☺) I keep seeing Boost this post where for x dollars a day, “your post can be seen by y number of people”. Right now, I’ll rely on word-of-mouth to spread my blog, thank you very much. If I happen to be seen by a bunch of people via Facebook and Instagram, then awesome. Bloggers usually don’t make a living off what they’re doing. Many do it just for the fun of it, or a hobby. For me, this is a way to express myself, rather than internalizing everything. Should one day I become Internet famous, so be it. What’s the likelihood? Very slim, but I’m not unhappy with that.

Anyway, back to the ad bullshit. Media outlets make tons of money advertising (I just wish the advertising people in southern Utah could learn to make an ad. They’re so damn annoying, obnoxious or downright stupid). One obscene example of advertising is the ads in the Super Bowl every year. In the World Series, a 30-second commercial runs about $500,000. The Oscars charge about four times that for the same 30-second spot. During the Super Bowl in 2018, advertisers shelled out, for a simple little 30 second spot, a mindblowing FIVE MILLION DOLLARS. Nineteen years ago, the same ad ran for $2.2 million, and for the very first Super Bowl in 1967, a commercial cost averaged around $40000. I have a hard time imagining 5,000,000 of anything, much less that kind of cash. I’ll never seen that much in my entire lifetime, and some big business goes and spends that much cash for 30 seconds of exposure during a game in which over a third of the country is participating on television (mind you, I’m not one of those 100+ million people—I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about football, but that’s a “whole ‘nother” post).

Ads on TV; ads on the radio, YouTube, Facebook. Hell, even Netflix is contemplating running ads, similar to TV commercials. Um, hell no!🙅‍♂️ To quote Ariana Grande, thank you, next. I get that when a platform is free, you’re liable to see an ad. But, when we’re already paying to watch Netflix, we not need to be subjected to corporate greed and interrupting our movie (or binge-watching all 97 seasons of whatever show) by sticking in a non-skippable fucking advertisement! The subscription is already being paid for. You don’t need to torture us to make even more money, you greedy, filthy corporate swine!

This blog post has been brought to you by😅…JUST KIDDING! I wouldn’t subject you to such abject torture (well, not unless this shit was actually big enough to be monetized💵💸). Seriously, though, as much as I want to rant and rave about it, ads are here to stay, wherever we are. So, go watch [insert name of show here] on your favorite streaming service or broadcast network. Get sucked into the advertising cesspool and enjoy yourselves.

Thank you for reading my words once again, published on this fine Sunday morning. May you have a productive week, with as little stress as possible. Until next Sunday, in all your activities, be safe and be well.