Fox calls rush play for NFL promo spots
Don’t blink — a blitz of six-second ads is slated to hit NFL games this fall.
Fox Networks will begin showing sixsecond TV ads beginning with NFL games on Sept. 10, right before kickoff on opening weekend, according to reports.
The commercials will be placed inside the usual commercial blocks of standard 15- to 30-second ads, but also during shorter breaks between plays.
Fox is banking that the new strategy will keep football fans on their couches with their eyes glued to their TV screens — instead of checking their phones or heading to the fridge during lulls in action.
Fox, which tested the shorter ads during the Teen Choice Awards last month, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The network says the shorter ads are a new paradigm in TV advertising that’s well suited to other sports like baseball — and which advertisers also should embrace.
“We have already been collaborating with brands and agencies that understand the need to evolve the model,” Joe Marchese, Fox Networks Group’s president of advertising revenue, told Variety.
“They are the ones that are going to receive the prime attention and get ahead, leaving behind those that try to make everything fit a legacy TV-buying model,” Marchese said.
By promising to feature the ads during unique, unpredictable times — instead of during commercial breaks when people are likely to stray from the TV — Fox can bill as much as $200,000 for six-second ads. That figure is roughly in line with the going rate for 15 second ads, according to a New York Times report.
For football fans especially, there may be something to the shorter ad format.
Although the average broadcast time for a 60-minute NFL game is three hours, the amount of playing time is a mere 11 minutes, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The average play lasts four seconds — just two seconds shy of the new ads.