CBS has an interesting gimmick going on at their Ad Labs site, in which you can view advertisements in order to watch CBS full-length episodes online. Will this trend take off?
Watching Ads for Free TV
To get up and running, you need to register with CBS, and the registration process runs fairly quickly, prompting you for a username and password along with other information. You can also log in with a facebook account.
Once you create an account, the CBS AdLabs page presents you with basically two options: watch ads or watch TV shows. Your current credit balance is also displayed on the screen as well. You start off, obviously, at zero credits.
Selective Ad Watching
I started out watching a few ads to grab some credit. Selecting the “Earn Credits” link routed me to a page in which I could select which ads I wanted to view, each earning 1 credit.
This sort of gimmickery reminds me of some of the “make money online” sites, that pay you something like the 100th of a penny for every advertisement you view, but in the case of Ad Labs, you’re just building up a collection of credits for viewing CBS programming.
The ads are fairly standard ones: luxury cars, blackberry devices and credit cards, etc. Nothing overly exciting, but they pass quick, and you can always flip over to a different browser tab while they run.
Thoughts about the Ads…
One of the nice things about this system, though, is the fact that you can select which ads you want to watch. You aren’t at the mercy of CBS but rather you can scroll through a long list of adds and view these for credit.
Truth be told, this could be a neat system if CBS included a few movie trailers in the mix, but instead the selection of ads isn’t the most exciting.
At least CBS does offer a feedback form at the bottom of the page, so if enough folks write in to suggest that CBS ad some half-interesting movie trailers (namely anything without Owen Wilson) there might then be some improvement to the site.
Watching Shows with Earned Credit
The shows are currently limited in selection to programs like NCIS, Numb3rs, and some of the CSI programs. So I selected ‘CSI: Miami’ (if for no other reason than to catch a David Caruso philosophical-sunglasses zinger).
An episode of CSI:Miami required two credits, so I needed to sit through two ads prior to proceeding, but once the ads were done and the episode was started, it was refreshing to be able to watch the full episode, totally commerical free (even if the episode of CSI was completely contrived.)
Other Thoughts…
Its fascinating to me the level at which television has mutated over the years. Gone are the commercial breaks inbetween segments of the show, and now we can “earn” our way around these ads by simply watching a few selective ads at our own convenience and then get rewarded with our show.
Although I wonder…
What is it, though, that keeps the viewer from starting the ad and then jumping to another tab? Or reading a book? True, “traditional” TV ads are no different: you can always get up and walk away from those ads too, so is this basically the same paradigm?
I have to wonder if this sort of system will catch on, or if this will just be another gimmick that never quite takes off because the same programs can be found somewhere else without the cost of commercials? It will be interesting to see what happens.
CBS Adlabs Links
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