Commercials

Product placement, one of the oldest tricks in advertisers’ toolbox, is getting an artificial-intelligence makeover. New technology has made it easier to insert digital, realistic-looking versions of soda cans and shampoo onto the tables and walls of videos on YouTube and TikTok. And a growing group of creators and advertisers is grabbing at the chance for an additional revenue stream. A recent TikTok from dancer Melissa Becraft featured a poster for Bubly, a sparkling-water brand owned by PepsiCo, hanging on the wall of…

Super Bowl 2024 Commercials (Picture Credit: IMDB & Youtube) On Sunday, February 11, the most awaited Super Bowl match occurred, where the Kansas City Chiefs played against the San Francisco 49ers. The Chiefs also won it this year, and it is their second consecutive win. The game was interesting indeed, but the entertaining star-studded advertisements made it fun. From Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Jennifer Aniston to Jenna Ortega, Lionel Messi, and more, here are some of the Super Bowl Commercials of 2024. The Super…

Taylor Swift’s new television special Sunday, aka Super Bowl LVIII, carried live from Las Vegas on CBS and Paramount+, came with a football game attached, a musical production number and a host of comedy sketches masquerading as commercials — and they said variety was dead!I have been asked here, however, to discuss only the commercials, which are granted a newsworthiness they rarely enjoy elsewhere in television, based entirely on their proximity to this one event, the big money involved and the big stars who pick up…

NEW YORK — Big name advertisers will be pulling out all the stops on Super Bowl Sunday — enlisting high-profile actors, investing in dazzling special effects and, they hope, going for laughs as they seek to win over viewers during game breaks. In an increasingly fractured and polarized media environment — and with fewer people watching live TV — the Super Bowl is an anomaly. The big game’s viewership has actually increased, with a record 115.1 million people tuning in last year. So marketers will use the game on Sunday,…

IBM commercial from 1984.Screenshot: IBMBefore the year 2000, Super Bowl commercials from tech companies offered millions of viewers their first glimpses of the future. Gizmodo watched dozens of videos from the 1980s and ‘90s to find the most iconic Super Bowl commercials from the early tech industry.Fax machines, internet connections, and Nokia phones may sound outdated now, but they used to be the cutting edge. These ads are far different from the tech commercials you’ll see in this year’s Super Bowl. We had to pull…

By MAE ANDERSON and WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS (AP Business Writers) NEW YORK (AP) — If you watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, you no longer have to wait until the big game to see what advertisers have in store for viewers. Many companies now release ads ahead of the game in the hope of capitalizing on the buzz that builds as the game approaches. They hope to recoup some of the reported $7 million that’s the going rate for a 30-second spot by capturing pre-game attention. It’s a big challenge to stand out among the…

Image: Adul10 (Shutterstock)Drug commercials in the U.S. are set to become more intelligible. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration updated its regulations regarding prescription drug ads that air on TV or radio. The change will specifically mandate that a drug’s side effects and other potential dangers “must be presented in a clear, conspicuous, and neutral manner.”Lions on Oxytocin are Surprisingly ChillThis update has been in the works for a long time. In 2007, the federal government passed a law that expanded…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeJapan’s Studio Ghibli says it won’t be releasing any commercials or trailers for co-founder and animator Hayao Miyazaki’s final film How Do You Live?The forthcoming film, which premieres in the country on 14 July, is one of the country’s most anticipated films in years, and is expected to serve as a poignant send-off for the genius creator behind animated classics including Spirited…

Image: A. Aleksandravicius (Shutterstock)YouTube is getting a little bit of an advertising shakeup. The company announced at the YouTube Brandcast event yesterday that it would be adding unskippable 30-second ads to the YouTube platform as viewed on televisions.Google’s Antitrust Case Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to AIAs Variety reports, the 30-second ads will run on the top 5% of its most-viewed and most-engaged videos on the platform when played on a television. YouTube will also begin testing out “Pause…

ChatGPT is easily the most discussed tech advancement of the year so far, but things are slowly getting out of hand. The “Godfather of AI” might be right to give up his Google AI work to advocate against the dangers of AI. One of his immediate worries isn’t that AI will take over the world in a post-apocalyptic Terminator-like future. However, we might not know what to trust online as AI becomes even better at generating news, images, and videos. It’s not quite there yet when it comes to videos, thankfully, as…