So, now on Foxtel Digital, the top Australian pay-tv guys are now providing “iAds” or interactive advertisments. If you believe the hype then you’ll see that Foxtel are providing a way for you to straight away respond to the ad by the Commonwealth Bank or whatever. “The launch of interactive advertising on Foxtel Digital builds on the control we give our subscribers over the content available on our platform, while giving advertisers a new and unique way of communicating with the consumer segments that matter most to them.” Cool, now I don’t have to wait until I next go out to respond to this great deal or whatever.

WTF????

We are talking about subsciption television. This was originally marketed in Australia as bring an ad-less alternative to commerical television. Commercial TV is funded purely by ad revenue, so I understand the massive amount of Ads. But I pay money (lots of it) for Pay-TV. This funding should be providing enough cash for them to survive, yet the ads keep coming. And now the ads are being sold to us a “feature”. Now when I move out I obviously won’t be even thinking of paying for stuff that is not much different to normal tv, even though the few shows I actually like are on foxtel (e.g. call for help, dead like me, some doco stuff).

It’s good to see that the foxtel guys have been able to slowly drift from their original marketing push (it had Bart Simpson skateboarding on the logo) to having people pay for more of the same that they get for free.