You can’t run away from ads, they are literally everywhere, but when does it become too much? Well in the case of Malaysian Pay TV operator Astro, its was earlier this week when they quietly rolled out an ad that appears above the Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) of their subscription channels.
The ad campaign, by local telecommunication giants Maxis, promotes it’s Happy Hour campaign for their prepaid offering, Hotlink. What has irked off customers is that the ad appears on every single channel – in bright red none the less. The EPG itself is self launching at every channel change, so expect to see it a lot! Considering the EPG contains information that you would read, the ad is also extremely distracting.
Astro Customers have been voicing out across both Facebook as well as Twitter on the disruptive ads. Astro’s Official Facebook page is also receiving a barrage of complaints from irritated customers.
Based on this replies from Astro’s Social Media representatives, this particular ad will be running all the way till the 24th of April!
We did a little bit of digging and found a proof of concept of this particular ad unit that was posted online early last year.
From the looks of it, expect to see more EPG advertisements on Astro in the weeks and months to come.
