Fox Networks Group ad sales chief Joe Marchese announced that Fox is targeting cutting ad time way down to two minutes an hour by the year 2020, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Marchese announced that target at a private industry event it hosted last week in Los Angeles, where advertisers, buyers and executives from rival media companies discussed TV advertising’s woes,” the story reports. “Bringing commercial time down to only two minutes would be a major change. In 2017, the average amount of ad time an hour on broadcast was a little over 13 minutes, according to Nielsen. On cable it was 16 minutes.”
The report notes that Fox would probably have to charge considerably more for what little inventory it had left.
“The shift is contingent on the industry changing the way it buys and sells media. Mr. Marchese wants to sell ads using a metric based on time spent with content, versus the number of views,” WSJ reports.
Ed Davis, chief product officer for ad sales at Fox Networks Group, is quoted saying in an email: “The two minutes per hour is a real target for Fox, and also our challenge for the industry. Creating a sustainable model for ad-supported storytelling will require us all to move.”
This, should it ever happen (hahahaha riiiiight) will push product placement and native advertising through the roof. Instead of getting their coffee from a cart, someone the NCIS cast will walk in with a tray of coffees and say “Who wants a cup of Starbucks?” and go into 15 seconds of which varieties are on the tray.