Yesterday I watched several episodes of Firefly on Hulu, at least five episodes. As you may know Hulu has short commercials during the show, on average 4-5 for each episode, that last for thirty seconds each, so there is two or so minutes of commercials an episode. I really don’t mind them much because they are what make it possible to watch TV shows and movies for free. What I do not like however is the way the advertisements are chosen, there seems to be no real process for this. During all those shows I saw about 25 commercials, around 3 for McDonald’s, 2 for a debt recovery program, the other 20 were all for Target. (Whoever is reading this, I am not saying anything about the companies that make the commercials, because they may not have control over when they are shown.) Showing commercials over and over again does not work to make people want to buy a product. The debt recover one did not apply to me, but I only saw it two times so it was fine, the one for McDonald’s was fine the first couple of times, I wanted to go eat there, I even considered it. After seeing it several more time though it just got old, it did not make me want to go there anymore than I already did. The Target commercial that was shown more than any other one, to be honest, I did not like it to start with, it has this hello goodbye song I find really annoying, the commercial would still have worked despite this if there was something at Target I could have gotten a good deal on. However after I saw it again and again and again. I was completely repelled from even thinking about going to Target I would prefer to shop elsewhere. I kept muting the commercial even though I usually prefer commercials to silence, but it was still annoying even on mute. This is not good for Hulu or the company that puts out the add, or the person watching something on Hulu. It is bad for Hulu because some people may be completely turned off from watching something and then they will not see the adds that pay Hulu’s bills, so the advertisers will not pay for the adds because they do not get customers. This will go all the way down to the person watching a TV show or movie because there will be less and less stuff to watch, and Hulu may disappear completely. Another problem I see with advertising is that these adds are not targeted very well, when the adds look more like they would target children, why are they on Firefly and not on some children’s show where they will make the most profit. Adds should only be shown enough times to get a customer, not turn them off, because even if they don’t become a customer now they may be later, but not if they are annoyed to death first. Adds should be targeted more towards the type of person that typically watches the show so that it is more profitable and customers are more content to watch your adds.