Recently, Huawei’s glory "smart screen" was released, but it was a hot discussion among netizens about smart TV boot advertisements — — Users "have been suffering from smart TV startup advertisements for a long time". Nanfang Daily reporter conducted an in-depth investigation.
Boot ads become the default settings?
Recently, the Glory Smart Screen, also known as Huawei TV, was officially released. Before the release, Zhao Ming, president of Glory, boasted in Weibo: "The voting is about to close, and everyone’s opinions on big-screen boot advertisements are highly consistent, and 81.5% of friends have chosen ‘ Never put up with it, not for a second ’ It seems that the boot advertisement greatly affects the experience. Don’t worry, there is no on-off advertisement on Glory Smart Screen! There will be no more in the future, and the consumer experience is supreme! Glory makes a smart screen like a mobile phone, and it turns on and off in seconds! "
There is no advertisement for the glory smart screen boot, and many netizens applaud. Compared with promoting the hardware performance of new products, starting without advertising has become a selling point of a new TV product? Behind this phenomenon, it is the helpless reality that domestic brand smart TVs generally have boot advertisements.
Nanfang Daily reporter personally found that well-known brand smart TVs, such as Xiaomi and Konka, have a startup advertisement for at least 10 seconds.
Interestingly, after the release of the glory smart screen with "second boot" and "no advertisement" as an important selling point, some netizens found that Xiaomi Smart TV also seemed to cancel the boot advertisement — — Blue static wallpaper appears on the screen during the TV startup, and a person with open arms looks up at the starry sky in the lower middle position of the screen. In the center of the screen are the words "Let everyone enjoy the fun of science and technology" and "innovation for everyone". In the upper right corner of the screen is the Logo of Xiaomi Company.
However, unexpectedly, Xiaomi people immediately denied this change. "I didn’t see the Xiaomi TV advertisement. It is very likely that the number of times you watched the advertisement today has reached the frequency limit, or there is no advertisement scheduled today." What is certain is that Xiaomi has no plans to cancel the boot advertisement.
Does the video website "crazy assists" form a superposition?
"I was watching the variety show" Extreme Challenge "with Iqiyi video, but it suddenly appeared in the middle of the screen ‘ Bean bean ’ A few words blocked the singer in the center of the stage, and in the next few seconds, the words were enlarged and covered the whole screen. " Ms. Chen complained to Nanfang Daily.
Nanfang Daily reporter saw in the relevant video provided by Ms. Chen that when the advertisement appeared, many viewers on the barrage were spitting. Judging from the way the advertisement is expressed, it is really rude and unpredictable.
The reporter noticed that the release of Glory Smart Screen brought consumers’ attention to the start-up advertisement of smart TV, but the advertisements of smart TV partners and major video websites were not criticized to the same extent. But in fact, well-known video websites, such as iQiyi, Tencent, Youku, etc., which cooperate with major domestic brands of smart TVs, all have different forms of advertisements.
Nanfang Daily reporter found in the survey that compared with the advertisements that come with smart TV, such advertisements have more forms of expression and more subtle techniques of expression. Some of them are psoriasis-shaped and appear in a certain corner of the screen, which just blocks a certain place and affects the viewing experience. Others are "seamlessly implanted". For example, in The Longest Day In Chang’an, which is being broadcasted recently, some advertisements of Youku are directly like a plot.
It is worth noting that such advertisements are provided by video websites, while smart TV advertisements are provided by brand manufacturers that produce and manufacture TVs. It is often difficult for consumers to distinguish them. The two are superimposed and consumers complain seriously.
Buying a member also has "nowhere to escape"?
Embarrassing, among the consumers who complained to Nanfang Daily about the situation, many bought the membership of the corresponding video website or smart TV, but they still had strong opinions. For example, Ms. Chen is a member of Iqiyi, but she is still inevitably harassed by "bean beans".
"I was watching the TV series" Little Joy "with PPTV, and suddenly an advertisement came, which was forcibly inserted. It was impossible to fast forward and inevitable. I had to wait for it to finish, then it was a black screen, and then I returned to the play." Mr. Niu said that he bought the membership of several brands of smart TVs, but he felt that members did not reach the original intention of not watching advertisements when they bought them. "I use Xiaomi TV to watch the content on my own hard disk and give me an advertisement."
A consumer also complained about the iQiyi platform in the name of "false propaganda" on the black cat platform, saying, "There was no advertisement at the beginning, but iQiyi actually launched a member-only advertisement."
"Even if members can close or skip advertisements, they need to perform some key operation, and you will not be significantly prompted on the advertisement page." Mr. Wu said that sometimes he was suddenly harassed by advertisements. He went to the remote control and then pressed a function key to turn off the advertisements. This process has been harassed by advertisements for a long time.
The reporter’s experience also found that after opening the membership, there are still various advertisements: the patch advertisements before the film range from 15 to 120 seconds, and members can skip or manually close them; After the pause, there will be a page advertisement, and members need to manually click the close button to close it; Brand advertisements inserted at the bottom of the screen generally appear before the film, often accompanied by previous reviews or actor propaganda; Pop-up advertisements appear in the film, and some of them have no close buttons; The most distinctive is the small theater advertisement, which is interpreted by the actors in the play. It can’t be closed when interspersed in the play, and some plots are still in harmony with the plot in the film. Some netizens bluntly can’t tell whether to insert advertisements in the play or insert TV dramas in the advertisements.
Take the 27th episode of the hit drama The Longest Day In Chang’an as an example. Before opening members, reporters need to watch the 125-second patch advertisement before the film, the brand advertisement inserted at the bottom of the screen for 35 seconds, the two-segment patch advertisement of 25 seconds and 45 seconds in the film, the 15-second pop-up advertisement and the 50-second small theater advertisement. After opening the membership, the platform skipped the patch advertisements for 125 seconds, 25 seconds and 45 seconds, but the rest of the advertisements still existed, which ultimately saved the members only 195 seconds of patch advertising time.
Previously, the results of a "video website member service questionnaire" conducted by the Zhejiang Consumer Protection Committee showed that "free advertising" was the main reason for users to buy members, accounting for 83.30%. However, 71.04% of users said that after purchasing members, they will often encounter advertisements when watching videos. According to iResearch data, 73.6% of users buy VIP members to advertise. However, the endless stream of new video advertisements runs counter to users’ wishes.
Selling TV is caught in a price war and has to rely on selling advertisements?
Why do manufacturers keep playing new tricks in advertising? This has to start with the smart TV ecology.
It must be said that Huawei’s entry into the TV market can bring a new focus to the market. Since last year, the focus of TV market has only been price war. On July 29th, China Household Appliances Market Report for the First Half of 2019 showed that in the first half of 2019, the average retail price of most household appliances declined, with the color TV leading the way down by 11% year-on-year.
According to data from the industry data platform Aowei Cloud, in the first half of 2019, the average price of color TVs decreased by 9.4% year-on-year, but the market scale did not increase. In the first half of 2019, the retail volume of China color TV market was 22 million units, down 2.7% year-on-year, and the retail volume was 64 billion yuan, down 11.8% year-on-year.
Nanfang Daily reporter’s online and offline shopping mall survey found that 65-inch smart TV can be bought for 3,000 yuan, especially Internet brands such as Xiaomi, which can almost be said to have been challenging the price bottom line.
In this regard, some people in the industry directly told reporters that many brand TV manufacturers do not expect TV hardware itself to make money for a long time, and regard TV as a platform, which can be regarded as a big-screen mobile phone, advertisements brought by TV manufacturers, and advertisements of various content partners, that is, major video websites. The most important purpose is to "plug in". "TV is cheap, that’s because there are smart TVs and video websites that sell all kinds of advertisements to compensate for that profit."
A data may also support this point. The 2019 China Network Audiovisual Development Research Report shows that by the end of 2018, advertising revenue is still the main profit model of video websites, accounting for 47.1% in 2018.
However, the fact that the price of smart TV is low because of a large number of advertisements is not known to most consumers. The reporter investigated the sales behavior of shopping guides in several shopping malls and found that few salespeople would remind consumers of the fact that major domestic brands of smart TVs basically include startup advertisements and endless advertisements of video website partners. Even the brand TVs themselves remind consumers of startup advertisements, which is often inconspicuous. In contrast, the so-called low price, large screen and high resolution information of smart TV is the focus of sales promotion. This situation has further caused a gap in the experience of consumers immediately after they buy back their TVs.
Who will take care of advertisements that infringe on consumers’ rights and interests?
Just in July, the administrative punishment that a TV channel was stopped by the relevant departments for broadcasting advertisements in violation of regulations became the focus of hot discussion among netizens. In contrast, there are far fewer cases in which smart TV producers or video websites are severely punished because of the disorder and flooding of advertisements.
Isn’t there a corresponding legal and regulatory constraint on smart TV advertising? Of course not. Looking through the relevant laws and regulations, the reporter found that taking the startup advertisement of smart TV as an example, Article 44 of the Advertising Law stipulates that the use of the Internet to publish and send advertisements shall not affect the normal use of the network by users. Advertisements published in the form of pop-ups on Internet pages shall be marked with a closing sign to ensure one-click closing.
"Ensure one-click closing", the smart TV start-up advertisement uses the Internet to publish advertisements, but in the current products, consumers can’t close such advertisements with one click at all, which has violated the Advertising Law.
In addition to the Advertising Law, the Consumer Protection Law stipulates that consumers have the right to know the real situation of the goods they buy or use or the services they receive. However, many detailed introduction pages of smart TVs do not clearly indicate and emphasize the existence of startup advertisements and other related advertisements, but consumers actually have to watch advertisements, which violates consumers’ right to know.
Not to mention that many consumers find it difficult to avoid the harassment of advertisements after purchasing members. Starting from the protection of consumers’ rights and interests, a college student in Suzhou sued Aiqiyi because he still saw advertisements after purchasing Aiqiyi members. The court recently made a first-instance judgment on the case and ordered Aiqiyi Company to compensate 30 yuan, a consumer.
Relevant legal persons pointed out that according to Article 63 of the Advertising Law, those who violate Article 44 of this Law shall be ordered to make corrections, and advertisers shall be fined between 5,000 yuan and 30,000 yuan. Therefore, one of the effective ways to regulate TV start-up advertisements is to issue fines to illegal manufacturers according to law, including ordering them to make corrections and fines. The double superposition of smart TV advertisements and video website advertisements of smart TV partners has infringed on consumers’ interests. On this basis, many consumers have spent money to buy membership services, but the results have not been spared. At present, there are still few related law enforcement cases. At the moment when video consumption is highly developed, the strict regulation of this disorderly phenomenon needs the attention of relevant departments.
"Some regulations can start from the source. For example, the relevant approval departments improve the content standards of smart TV and video websites, and require that the TV be marked with or without advertisements when it is turned on in the relevant materials. If it is marked with advertisements, it must be marked with a close sign to ensure one-click closure. " The person said. (Nanfang Daily reporter Yao Wei Intern Su Xiankui Xu Yukun Coordinator: Cheng Peng)
