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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

> non-intrusive like television

In which country?!?

I hardly see any regular TV because in 30m show, 20m are advertisements, and the remaining 10m have lots of product placements.

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Ha ok that's true. Ad breaks are long, superimposed ads exist, and sponsored content is a thing. Maybe "less intrusive" or even "predictable" is better language. I'm thinking of moments where you're scrolling and you get a pop-up that you can barely figure out how to close. You go to click a link and the page moves, whether by accident or not, because of an ad loading there. Autoplay ads (and other videos) that make me instaclose, etc. TV is at least predictable.

Bit of an exaggeration. The average show is roughly 22-24 minutes per half hour with the rest going to advertisments.

Try to watch Portuguese TV on prime time, specially when soap operas or loved series are reaching their last episodes.

Quantity can be excessive, but a TV commercial break still guarantees N minutes of harmless unimportant content you can ignore. It only wastes time, and not always.

Instead, a computer ad costs you money for bandwidth, can be intrinsically annoying (e.g. playing sounds or manipulating the browser), and poses a direct risk of serious harm (malware, subscriptions, snooping/tracking, etc.).

I think the most egregious example is latter seasons of The Big Bang Theory clocking in at 16 minutes. That's ~50% ads.

Don't forget how they jack up the volume on the commercials.

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