Commercials are like blogs; the more controversial or funny or outrageous, the more attention they get. If you don’t like a blog, you can skip forward to something else. If you don’t like bland advertising, well…that’s why they created “fast forward.”

I’m not anti-advertising. There are certain ads that just make me stop, look and listen and move my finger off the FF. While I’ll gladly fast forward through laundry detergent ads or shots of cars with bows on their roofs or male enhancement pitches (although I can see why some guys might pause at that point), when the Boost Mobile pigs show up (click here for video), I’ll stop and have a laugh. Those pigs remind me of trade shows.

I don’t fast forward through clever ads but for every ham eating pig there’s a dog of an ad that doesn’t deserve 30 seconds of attention and only gets watched because the viewer can’t fast forward, doesn’t need to use the bathroom or already has a beer. It’s not my fault that some advertisers lack imagination and a decent ad agency, nor is it my concern that the broadcasters running these dogs might not get the attention—or revenues–they want. Suck it up, guys! Life’s tough, “Mad Men” is fiction and the ‘60s were never as much fun as old timers remember. It’s 2010 and attention spans are shorter than mini skirts.

All that said, I concede there’s a problem with the way broadcast media works. For better or worse, it’s ad supported. If people duck the ads and advertisers know they’re doing it there’s no money to pay for good content. And in media, that’s more disturbing than pigs eating bacon.

That’s why some Australian news grabbed my eyeballs. Those down-under folks are always on top of things. Australian commercial TV stations will be equipping set-top boxes that run Freeview with MHEG 5 (that’s short for the cleverly named Multimedia and Hypermedia Information Coding Experts Group, not the equally cleverly named MPEG or Moving Pictures Experts Group).

MHEG is an interactive middleware that powers Freeview, which, ironically is a digital TV service owned by the major TV stations in Australia. It’s ironic because these same broadcasters are using MHEG to plop static advertising into Freeview programming while promoting the service as “the easiest way to enjoy digital TV for free. There are up to 50 digital TV channels, no subscription, no contract, no fuss.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t being forced to watch an ad against your will something of a fuss creator? The Aussies waltz around this dilemma by arguing that MHEG won’t restrict viewing, it will enhance it with “high definition graphics and interactive channels.”

If they say so. Personally, though, I think interactivity — with or without advertising support — is better as a free will option delivered as part of a programming package and, in the best of all worlds, targeted to the viewer’s interests, not as a way to stifle my desire to fast forward those Geico cavemen. Make an ad worthwhile, and I’m in hog heaven; force me to watch a boring ad and you chance losing me as a viewer altogether.

The holidays are all about tradition, starting with overeating on Thanksgiving and shopping ‘til dropping on Black Friday. Far be it from me to play Grinch and rain on the parade of hopeful retailers who count on ridiculously low prices coupled with ridiculously low inventories to draw mobs of consumers out into the dawn hours to scratch and claw — and in the case of that retired high school linebacker, crack-back tackle — to get the latest gizmo, but there might be a better way.

The hint of a new tradition has wafted into the pine scented Christmas caroled as Cyber Monday. It’s the day to jostle with the contentious online set to find the best prices on the least available toys and gadgets. And you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your home.

Both these traditions have their strong points for retailers: they push inventory and dam up the sea of red ink that’s threatening to drown the economy. And both have benefits for consumers: lower prices, the opportunity to get up close and personal with street people who object to you moving into their cardboard box neighborhoods so early in the morning, and, of course, the ever-popular Web searches that dead end in frozen screens and unfrozen screams.

I propose a new tradition to start next year called iTV Thursday. iTV Thursday is based on the proposition everyone watches television on Thanksgiving. Norman Rockwell’s family might have gathered gap-toothed and wide-eyed around that big turkey on the dining room table but today’s family more likely gathers around the 50-inch Panasonic widescreen.

When enhanced by interactivity that widescreen can become a virtual shopping mall. The interminable advertising between downs on the field or floats in the parade can be enhanced by letting the viewer/consumer dig more deeply into the advertised product. Like that deep fry cooker? Find out the most interesting features and, if you like, click a button and order it. Want more information about how it works? Click another button; representatives are standing by to help. Not interested at all, it’s 60 seconds to run off to the bathroom or get another beer.

The nice thing about all this is that when you combine interactivity with your DVR you can wander as deeply as you want into the advertising netherworld and always return to your programming from the point at which you left.

That’s it, folks. iTV Thursday. Kill three birds with one stone: the turkey, of course; the desperate need for the retailer to move product; and the need for the consumer to consume that product. All from the comfort of the family room.

And Black Friday? Maybe you can actually take a holiday and do something with the family. Cyber Monday? How about doing some work with the computer instead?

In marketing speak this is called a win-win. In blog speak it’s called an idea.

Perhaps you’ve seen the commercials; it’s a new TV season, full of hope, cops, doctors, so-called reality and dumb husbands. OK, maybe it’s not so new.

This marks the first television season where everyone is digital and that, more than almost anything in television history, levels the playing field and presents a tremendous opportunity for the broadcaster who steps off that field.

The first big step in the right direction will happen when a broadcaster realizes that video is not video and that TV doesn’t have to be TV. It’s a lesson that the online community has long ago learned and one that the smart broadcasters will learn now: digital video is data, it’s ones and zeroes (and if you’ve seen some of those fall premiers you have to believe broadcasters understand zeroes) and it can be manipulated the same as any data from a spreadsheet to photograph. Once broadcasters understand that, it becomes easy to treat that data as metadata and begin to embed it with tags and hyperlinks to provide more information about what’s happening during the program on the screen.

The biggest problem is that broadcasters have been behind the innovation curve for so long they probably don’t have the impetus to step off the playing field and leave their network brethren behind. They’re also a prideful bunch who don’t believe that they should change a model that’s been in effect for 60 years.

Rather than realize the potential of metadata to take their beloved and lifesaving product placements and carry them to a whole new level of consumer awareness, broadcasters are content with force-feeding the public ridiculous images of Cisco capabilities during 24. If you want to push a product and please an advertiser, it can be done both more subtly and to better effect with metadata.

Imagine Mike the plumber on Desperate Housewives reaching for a wrench under the sink. Embedded in the broadcast data is metadata from Craftsman. The interested—and perhaps even targeted viewer—could dive into this data and learn more about that wrench. The program—and the broadcast world—stops momentarily while the viewer gets information for a future hardware purchase. And how much more might that be worth to Sears than just a quick cut to a Craftsman logo on the wrench?

Broadcasters are guilty of many sins, not the least of which is an overdose of misplaced pride. In this instance, though, it’s not necessarily the broadcasters’ fault. They haven’t thought this way because the people who aggregate their signals don’t offer the technology that would let them to do this. On the other hand, broadcasters are often responsible for the breakdown in relationships with cable, satellite and telephone providers who already understand the power of interactivity and who are making advanced video-on-demand and network DVRs commonplace elements in their offerings.

True cooperation with outside delivery mechanisms will be necessary to make this happen. The programming stream would need to be unicast, manipulated at the headend where a server would take that stream and send EBIF tags to the set-top box. This type of data manipulation is already on tap for cable networks with the most to gain by further informing their viewers—shows such as DYI and any number of offerings from The Discovery Channel. The opportunities for embedded information are pretty much limitless. With consumer buy-in, programming can even be tailored to provide information based on a viewer’s habits and preferences letting the network DVR do the job of rooting out and suggesting the appropriate metadata.

The cable networks, as has always been the case, will take advantage of this opportunity first. Cable operators, with their inherent interactive capabilities will assure this.

Broadcasters, as has been their pattern for far too long, will be behind the curve. Perhaps, once they understand that television stopped being TV when they shut down their analog transmitters, they’ll realize the value of digital and join the embedded TV movement.

There’s a “gold rush” to put video content onto multiple screens ranging from televisions (of course!) to PCs to mobile phones with assorted other devices in between. As with any gold rush, some will strike it rich and others will go bust because things just don’t pan out.

One thing is certain: there’s a public hunger for content, and people will go to any available screen to watch what they want. I see it on the freeway — distracted drivers out there playing with their handheld devices when they should be looking at traffic. (It’s why I try to take the train to work.)

The make-or-break question is how much the public is willing to pay for this video — if anything — and whether advertisers will pay to support it.

I was intrigued recently by news from Qualcomm’s FLO TV, the unofficial/official video source for mobile players like AT&T and Verizon Wireless. FLO is a stockpile of live and recorded—mostly recorded—linear television delivered via Qualcomm’s own dedicated spectrum to video services offered by wireless players. It’s supported by subscriptions AND advertising.

The news that caught my eye was how FLO TV is trying to differentiate by partnering with Rentrak, the same company that tracks advertising usage for cable channels, so that advertisers can understand not only what mobile video viewers are watching but, more importantly, when they’re watching. Mobile is a transient video platform so advertisers want to know minute-by-minute if their wares are being viewed and, as a bonus, by whom. The mobile phone, because it is personal, provides that kind of grainy detail and Rentrak has been hired to sift through the chaff and discover the value for advertisers.

It is one more indication that video, unlike the Web itself, will be a differently plowed field. Unlike newspapers, which wantonly offered up all their content for free hoping to make some return on advertising, only to backpedal from that really bad idea, video content providers want some form of guaranteed payback. Advertisers, too, have become wary of the Web’s blanket approach and want to drill down and find out how much impact their products are getting on a screen beyond normal broadcast television.

Mobile, as the fourth screen (after televisions, laptops and PDAs) has learned from the fourth estate that it’s better to know upfront what pays and what doesn’t. There’s only so much advertising to go around and subscriptions never really pay for anything but the base expenses.

This movement to track and quantify mobile video viewing should serve as a bit of ad-vice for more traditional service providers. There’s no doubt the big screen is the best screen—isn’t that what movie theaters say?—and there is assuredly an entrenched base of advertisers willing to throw dollars at shows that bring in a big audience. But big broadcast audiences are an advertiser’s version of the “All-You-Can-Eat” buffet — you buy the whole thing, but you’re never quite sure how much of it is good for you.

What FLO is doing is giving advertisers more of the information they need to understand what folks are watching and when. It’s not yet to the level of targeted advertising that cable is moving toward — or the targeted, interactive ads that ActiveVideo can deliver — but it’s giving advertisers more of the tools they need to make the best buying decisions.

In the same way that viewers are finding ways to watch what they want, when they want it, advertisers are going to find efficient ways to identify and reach the most valuable audiences. In both cases, it would be prudent for cable and IPTV service providers to find ways to cash in on the gold rush, rather than risk being buried in someone else’s gold mine.