This is a magazine about personal computers, so let's talk about television.

Television ratings, actually. What exactly are they? Well, simply put the ratings figures are supposed to show the number of people who watch each particular network during specific time slots of the day. "Prime time" tends to be smaller slots, such as the half-hour news bulletins, while late night viewing isn't so focused. The network that has the most viewers doesn't just win a meat tray and a six pack of beer every week - theoretically the television station that attracts the largest audience will be the network of choice for the advertisers. A company that decides to produce a television commercial (called a TVC by those in the know, which now includes you) will want it aired on the network or in the timeslot where it will have maximum exposure.

How do they know the number of people watching? In Australia they use a clever black box of tricks installed in a selection of homes around the country. The box faithfully records that family's viewing habits and the data it gathers is extrapolated to represent the entire nation.

Have you ever seen a black box? Do you know someone who has had one? No? That's not a bad a thing, because think about this...

It's no good having a million people watching your TVC if none of them is going to believe it. What you really want is a million viewers who can be convinced in 30 seconds that an oven can be cleaned with a single wipe, frozen pizzas are just like the real thing and there are steep hills in the world where the trees magically grow at a forty five degree angle (for the latest 4WD to effortlessly climb - get it?). You want your TVC audience to be gullible and dumb as dog poo. The number of people watching isn't important - it's the number of idiots. So as a rule the black boxes are placed in demographics where - it's unfortunate to suggest - the average viewer isn't too bright. It also goes a long way to explaining why so much television these days is utter, puerile bile (to put it lightly). They're trying to build an audience of complete thickheads who will believe the ridiculous advertising.

My Point

What's all this got to do with computers? The interesting comparison is the website advertising we're bombarded with every time we use the Internet - we'll get to spam emails in a minute. We choose a television network and program to watch, so you can't reasonably complain about the TVC's aired during the commercial breaks.

However a perfectly legitimate hyperlink to a program update or a PDF file can lead us torturously through pages of irritating, senseless web adverts about rubbish we're not remotely interested in. By the way, in case you didn't know, were talking big business here. Website advertising generates tens of billions of dollars for browser companies such as Yahoo and Google every year. It's how they make their money.

The fascinating thing behind this is the cornerstone concept that we actually watch this crap. We read the adverts, we click on the pop-up balloons - we believe we're the one millionth customer to visit the page and we've won something free. Who takes notice of any of it? Personally I go crazy waiting for this garbage to fill the screen until I can get to what I really want - which always loads last. (Yelling abuse at the monitor speeds the process up I've found).

What is the point in an advertising strategy that just drives us all nuts? Having a look at spam email might give us a clue. I don't use a spam filter. Past efforts with trial versions have seen important stuff labelled incorrectly as spam and I prefer to delete it myself. Every day I receive multiple invitations to buy cheap drugs (which don't work), miracle potions to extend the length of something and that banking guy in Nigeria is still trying to find a safe deposit for his million dollars. Why are these scams still out there? When it comes to "common knowledge" it doesn't come more common than the fact these originate from pyramid selling, unscrupulous charlatans. Why do they bother still trying to trick us?

There used to be an old adage that if you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters one of them would accidentally write "War and Peace" (sounds a bit like the plethora of Internet bloggers we have now). This, of course, is ridiculous. Anything by Bryce Courtenay I can understand, but "War and Peace"? The same theory however is behind the spam emails. Send an infinite amount of emails to an infinite amount of addresses and someone, somewhere will pull out the credit card only to discover the pink pills don't lengthen anything.

It's a numbers game and the more annoying website advertising has a similar principle. Keep putting it out there over hundreds of websites with millions of potential hits and eventually somebody will click on the balloon or try to shoot the bouncing bunny to get a prize. The demographic is the entire world. The web advertisers think we're all easy pickings - that we all watch Big Brother and phone in votes (wasn't Pamela Anderson lovely in that yellow Chux Wipe she wore at the airport?).

For as long as eBay lets false bids flourish and Russian email- order brides can be kidnapped, we all have to put up with pop-up web advertisements and pleas for help from Nigerian bankers. And if someone wants to put a black box on top of your telly, punch them in the nose. They think you're an idiot.

Note: Graeme Hague©  Permission to copy or quote extracts from this article may only be done with the written permission of the author.

Reprinted from the August 2008 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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