Brought to you in part by: Better, smarter commercials

If you want to see the future of how commercials should be done, check out ESPN’s new 30 for 30 documentaries.

The documentary series is riveting, but so are the commercials. Because each break only features one! Levi’s Jeans sponsored the series, so they had two spots, and Honda had a spot as well. That’s it. I watched a 1-hour documentary on cable, and sat through 3 commercials.

This is the future, and both marketers and TV companies need to realize this. Consumers understand that TV shows are subsidized by commercials, so they’re a necessary evil. But enough is enough. And from a marketing standpoint, it’s much more effective to do commercials the way 30-for-30 has been, since the sponsor gets an audience that hasn’t been numbed by four identical beer commerials.

There’s absolutely no need for 5 or 6 commercials at every break of a TV show. People are tivoing, channel surfing, facebooking and texting during commercials. It’s the show they want. And this is especially true for documentaries, movies on TV or sporting events. It would be so easy to have the 1st inning, brought to you by Bank Of America. Boom, show a 30-second commercial for BofA, and get the game going. Second inning. Brought to you by Pepsi. Boom, Pepsi commercial. Game on.

So hopefully 30-for-30 is part of a new trend, and not just an innovation thrown together for ESPN’s latest series of specials. Because viewers could really get used to this.

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