I am watching a marathon of So NoTORIous (What? Jealous. Don’t hate.) on VH1. I’ve got near total ad blindness for the lower right corner station identifiers that have become omnipresent, but I got a special treat tonight. I didn’t notice it until I was shocked into looking back, but the standard station identifier is actually a mashup of VH1 and the Gap Red campaign… through the whole show:

Now, the thing that shocked me: About 5 minutes into the show the logo asploded into a full screen overlay commercial stating “Be a good-looking samaritan.” The logo was full screen, semi-transparent, did a little dance, then minimized back down to the station identifier:

Genius, or evil? It got me talking and blogging about it, though I am not buying anything as it’s overexposed and ti(RED).

Since I noticed my first 1/3rd screen advertising overlay (with audio) for Nip/Tuck a few years ago, I have been waiting for full screen overlays. They are finally here, though in the guise of charity.

Update: I still don’t know if this is evil, but I have been thinking about it in somewhat obvious terms. TV used to have a captive audience. They no longer do thanks to Tivo and other DVRs.

The web on the other hand learned early on that no one was captive. It adapted, and we know have eyeblasters: Ads that take over the page, and thus captureCOMMAND attention either automatically or on user initiation. They are generally required to have a close box so users can get back to the content below. This is an example of an eyeblaster. An annoying one at that, with irritating audio and an incredibly obfuscated close control.

As shown above, we now we have TV doing a crippled version of an eyeblaster—one that cannot be closed, and is not user initiated. One would hope that given the right technology enabling rich user interaction tv providers will back off to something less invasive like the web version. One could skip the programming directly and create highly targeted ads via a graphics card on the cable box. How far away will that be pervasive and how long until tv providers will use it pervasively. The technology is not far off, but I am willing to bet they will not do-the-right-thing by switching quickly. They will stay as invasive as possible for as long as possible, given their track record with HD.