On the trading floor at Prism where I have my space CNBC runs constantly on various monitors on the wall. Aside from noting the time delay in news reporting from the live feeds that also fill general setting, I've noticed as many of you have that some products have found their way into the daily programming. These products, ExtenZe for instance, are usually found in the overnight infomercial space and now are running daytime. What does this tell us about CNBC and such products?
I ask this question with the general caveat that what appears to be a nationally aired commercial may not be. In SE Florida, which is served by Comcast, there is a thing called "upcutting". Normally that term means that part of a commercial, by mechanical/electronic error, plays over the end of the previous commercial. It happens fairly often on certain stations. As :30 commercials are never more than :30 seconds (usually 29+a fraction seconds) it is just bad work in the traffic department when this occurs. Other times however, local advertising via cable dispensors will actually overwrite a national broadcast commercial feed with another commercial. This is a frequent occurance and if you watch a commercial pod (a pod is a group of commercials in a break) closely you will see it because it is a manual overwrite or breakin and is very hard to get right..the result is a small snipet of another commercial or the next commercial seeming to start a few seconds into it....so you can't be positive what is happening...but back to the topic at hand.
Extenze would never have run anywhere except the infomercial space a few years ago simply due to content. Some networks have pushed the envelope from the getgo (Comedy Central for instance) and have run adult oriented spots for years. CNBC is not one of those.
One might think that Extenze is so successful that it can buy national space during the market day on CNBC but remember this is an infomercial product so it runs with a fairly well defined ROI/CPC (cost per call) - they spend so much and expect so many calls/orders. It has to pay out. It is safe to say that a 30 minute infomercial at 3am often doesn't cost as much as a :30second commercial on CNBC during market hours. But lets say they cost the same. For ExtenZe it means that they expect roughly the same number of calls generated by a :30second ad as they do for their middle of the night infomercial.
If this is the situation and the CNBC commercial pays out then end of story. The alternative explanation is that CNBC's junk rate is so low or their inventory is so out of whack that ExtenZe has put in a bid at their CPC expectations for a :30second and CNBC is running it because it is in an undersold position and even some money is better than no money.
The "first blush" would be that ExtenZe is wildly successful and can afford the expenditure. The alternative is that ExtenZe is taking advantage of a really wide open advertising market and it isn't that they are so good, it is because the network is undersold.
I cite ExtenZe because it is fairly well known and by all accounts does pretty well, internet reviews to the contrary. The underlying story could be, though that networks (like CNBC here) might be suffering in the general advertising slump and will sell off the rate card.
Just something to think about as we will be taking a look at what advertising tells us about a company in the next few blog entries.
I ask this question with the general caveat that what appears to be a nationally aired commercial may not be. In SE Florida, which is served by Comcast, there is a thing called "upcutting". Normally that term means that part of a commercial, by mechanical/electronic error, plays over the end of the previous commercial. It happens fairly often on certain stations. As :30 commercials are never more than :30 seconds (usually 29+a fraction seconds) it is just bad work in the traffic department when this occurs. Other times however, local advertising via cable dispensors will actually overwrite a national broadcast commercial feed with another commercial. This is a frequent occurance and if you watch a commercial pod (a pod is a group of commercials in a break) closely you will see it because it is a manual overwrite or breakin and is very hard to get right..the result is a small snipet of another commercial or the next commercial seeming to start a few seconds into it....so you can't be positive what is happening...but back to the topic at hand.
Extenze would never have run anywhere except the infomercial space a few years ago simply due to content. Some networks have pushed the envelope from the getgo (Comedy Central for instance) and have run adult oriented spots for years. CNBC is not one of those.
One might think that Extenze is so successful that it can buy national space during the market day on CNBC but remember this is an infomercial product so it runs with a fairly well defined ROI/CPC (cost per call) - they spend so much and expect so many calls/orders. It has to pay out. It is safe to say that a 30 minute infomercial at 3am often doesn't cost as much as a :30second commercial on CNBC during market hours. But lets say they cost the same. For ExtenZe it means that they expect roughly the same number of calls generated by a :30second ad as they do for their middle of the night infomercial.
If this is the situation and the CNBC commercial pays out then end of story. The alternative explanation is that CNBC's junk rate is so low or their inventory is so out of whack that ExtenZe has put in a bid at their CPC expectations for a :30second and CNBC is running it because it is in an undersold position and even some money is better than no money.
The "first blush" would be that ExtenZe is wildly successful and can afford the expenditure. The alternative is that ExtenZe is taking advantage of a really wide open advertising market and it isn't that they are so good, it is because the network is undersold.
I cite ExtenZe because it is fairly well known and by all accounts does pretty well, internet reviews to the contrary. The underlying story could be, though that networks (like CNBC here) might be suffering in the general advertising slump and will sell off the rate card.
Just something to think about as we will be taking a look at what advertising tells us about a company in the next few blog entries.
They must be doing well, because now they're advertising the new Extenze for women! I swear it's true - there's a link above to their site. It looks like it's targeted towards men, however. Perhaps that is by design...
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