Are commercials on their way out?

Of course, people associate commercials almost exclusively with marketing. But as technology advances, do we still associate marketing with commercials?

For a while, commercials have been the best, or one of the best, ways to reach as many people as possible in terms of advertising. Ever since the first commercial was released almost 80 years ago, commercials have been selling products for companies, and making it easy for customers to order items by including phone numbers to call, websites to visit, and stores to find the product at. However, since technology is developing and times are changing, commercials could be becoming obsolete.

Netflix is an extremely practical viewing platform with a huge number of options for viewers to choose from. But one of the best things about Netflix: no commercials. There is no need to sit in front of commercials that are interrupting the show or movie you have been watching, and no need to fast forward through these seemingly obnoxious segments every 10 minutes. As more people are watching movies and shows on platforms like Netflix or Hulu, they are less likely to be exposed to commercials while watching TV, and the same goes for music platforms. Listening to music on Spotify, Pandora, or SoundCloud with a premium account automatically disables all ads. This way, commercials do not reach the same broad audience that they used to through regular television and the radio.


Additionally, commercials are rather expensive to organize. A company must pay a crew, actors, props, equipment, the company that will be playing their commercial, and they will have to spend time actually making the commercial. Today, marketing is much cheaper and easier with the presence of social media. Companies can pay influencers to do all the work for them, and they get their product out there at a possibly much lower cost, and much less effort. On YouTube, ads can be played and the company can be charged only for the number of times the video was viewed costing only around $0.10-$0.30 per view. Companies can also make social media accounts to promote their products to the public for free, which is much more logical that setting up commercials.

This day in age, commercials seem to be on their way out as new forms of marketing are on their way in. As companies gain easier access to their customers, we will only be lured in further.

https://www.businessinsider.com/first-television-commercial-ever-2016-6
https://influencermarketinghub.com/how-much-do-youtube-ads-cost/