A new kind of advertising is coming to N.F.L. games and other programming on Fox Sports this fall: the six-second television commercial.
Fox Networks Group will offer the bite-size slots alongside its standard 15- and 30-second ads for a variety of sporting events after first testing the format on its broadcast of the Teen Choice Awards in mid-August.
People are used to seeing short video ads on platforms like Snapchat, Facebook and YouTube, but not so much on network TV, where the currency for decades has been 15- and 30-second ads. While TV networks have experimented with shorter commercials in the past, largely as publicity stunts for specific brands, Fox is hoping to make six-second ads an industry standard across broadcasters as consumers in the internet era show less tolerance for frequent, bloated ad breaks during shows.
“When the six-second ads are placed in unique positions, it has the potential to gain even more attention than a traditional unit,” Eric Shanks, president of Fox Sports, said in an interview.
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