OPINION

ADVERTISING in sport is hardly new. Whole competitions are clumsily named after a sponsor, but, oh boy, Channel 7 takes it to an entirely new level in the bombardment of advertising through its two week coverage of the Australian Open.

It’s not even the ads in the actual ad break — I’ll get to those later — it’s the advertising disguised as content in the “normal” programming. It’s the height of annoying, cynical penetration of brands.

What happened to just watching tennis?!

On Sunday — and it’s always during the day when there are less matches on — I watched about maybe 30 minutes of its coverage. In that time, I saw no less than five branded segments.

The first was advertising for a furniture brand, pretending to be an interview between Giann Rooney and Aussie women’s player Ash Barty. The segment was filmed on this brand’s couches and every now and then, the camera would pull out to a wide shot just in case you missed that the sofas were the real story — never mind this very obvious move was crazy awkward and detracted from the interview.

(I’m not going to name any of the brands because they don’t need another free plug.)

Also in this short block of programming was Roger Rasheed doing vox pops around Melbourne Park with randoms, asking them what “wellbeing” means to them. First of all, why does anyone care if John from Fitzroy (not his name) says he walks the dog daily and eats vegetables? Hardly riveting insight. What Channel 7 really wants you to care about is that boring three minutes was paid for by a vitamin company.

Now, let a roving reporter take you to this fun installation where you can play a game on a big screen and win a trip to Paris, all brought to you, of course, by a car company. And let’s catch up with Lleyton Hewitt, playing a round with some kids, all while spruiking credit card debt.

Or what about the package of spectators running through water fans brought to you by a Big Four bank which is followed by a gratuitous shot of a bank of ATMs from said Big Four bank.

What’s even worse is when the commentators and presenters start dropping it in their interactions. Like Todd Woodbridge, who appears in an ad for a tech brand’s fridge during the commercial break, and then oh-so casually ties it into his in-program banter.

I really hope all these Channel 7 personalities are getting paid extra in their contracts to be shameless shills.

So in that short span of programming, it was pretty much all advertising and no actual, worthwhile content. Unless you think endless promos for MKR, Home and Away and The Good Doctor are worthwhile content — they’re not, and that MKR “Russians” promo is borderline racist.

Every time it actually cuts to an ad break, you’ll see a certain life insurance ad for the 78th time that day. I wish someone had told those insurance marketers that Sia’s Chandelier, which underscores this ad supposedly celebrating Australian life, is about alcoholism.

And don’t get me started on how betting companies have nefariously infiltrated sports coverage — much smarter people have written about this and the impact it has on the normalisation of gambling on children.

It’s no secret that audiences are less and less engaged with advertising. Normal ads can be fast-forwarded (if you’re recording), you get up to go the bathroom during the break or, more likely, you pick up your phone and look for something to distract you.

So TV networks have become great at embedding ad content within the program itself. This used to be called product placement (like how contestants on The Block only drive a particular brand of car). The updated version of product placement is called branded content — when content is created specifically for anyone willing to pay.

Australian media rules dictate you can only have 15 minutes of “non-program” content per hour before 6pm. Branded content is one of the ways TV networks get around this, so in my case yesterday, I ended up watching about 25 minutes of ads in 30 minutes.

It’s hard to put on hundreds of hours of TV coverage around a single event, so it’s not like Channel 7 has an easy job. It’s also expensive.

Most TV networks and publishers create branded content for their clients (including this website). Traditional media are under pressure when it comes to declining ad revenue and competition from digital behemoths such as Facebook and Google, so they look for any opportunity to stymie that bleed.

But there’s a balance. When you’ve become more about insufferably jamming advertising down your audience’s throat than the sport people have turned on to watch, it’s time to dial it back. Please.

Do you think Channel 7 have gone too far with its advertising integration? Leave your comment below or tweet at @wenleima.