I want my clear blue sky and unadorned wall back

What had started out as simple TV advertising between programs have become so intrusive that almost every two minutes there is a commercial break. Consumers armed with remote controls zapped away commercials in snarky if not sadistic glee. So what do broadcasters do to ROI insistent advertisers?

They innovate by subtler intrusion. The Times Online reports that the boffins at ITV have come up with a new approach called "automatically placed overlay advertising" using technology from Keystream that can spot large "clear" areas in video content -- an empty blue sky, for instance, or an unadorned wall -- and superimpose a logo or message, embedding it into the programming.

And you thought set-top boxes that allow us to record programs and then jam the commercials mean that we’ll get uncontaminated content! As viewers get cleverer, broadcasters get smarter. Now it’s the turn of the viewers again to invent new ways to get back that clear blue sky and that unadorned wall on the screen ;-)

.