For weeks now, both Antena 3 and La Sexta have been abruptly inserting advertising breaks that disrupt television content. These are not the usual ad breaks, where presenters hand over to commercials. Nor are they interruptions with a notice of a divider separating two blocks of a program. Nor the classic transition between two different broadcasts. It is a twenty-second advertisement that violently intrudes upon whatever event is being broadcast at that moment, crushing its content. Last week, amidst the tense and sensationalist news about Noelia Castillo's euthanasia request during the broadcast of Y ahora Sonsoles and Más vale tarde, there were several interruptions of this nature. If a report was being aired, a panel discussion was taking place, or a live connection was being made, those twenty seconds of advertising trampled over the live feed. This Wednesday, on Espejo público, Lorena García was interviewing Iñaki Anasagasti in a live connection. She was asking him about the photographs of ETA prisoners that had appeared in a popular race and, to conclude the conversation, she took the opportunity to ask him what he thought of the lehendakari's request to bring the Guernica to the Guggenheim in Bilbao for a few months as a form of symbolic reparation. Just at that moment, a loud twenty-second advertisement suddenly appeared, drowning out his words. When the violent and annoying advertising cut ended, Anasagasti was already finishing his sentence. We were left without his response. These are advertising inserts that are made outside the program's broadcast signal. They inject them directly into DTT. If you retrieve the broadcast on Atresmedia's digital platform or through Movistar+'s grid, that advertising cut does not appear. It is only for viewers watching DTT. Obviously, these inserts do not save you from the usual advertising. The formula could violate the general audiovisual communication law of 2022 because it does not respect the program's integrity – advertising cannot cut off responses, sentences, scenes, or any narrative continuity–. Furthermore, this practice could be used as a form of veiled censorship, disrupting television moments at convenience. The method is part of an increasingly widespread trend of disregard for viewers. It is a way of transforming the model: the audience ceases to be the recipient of the content and becomes a mere reception device for advertising impacts. The television experience is increasingly fragmented and poorly curated. Given the ease with which certain commercial practices are adopted, the method could end up invading television grids. From all for the audience to all for the money.

The Spanish government has approved the draft bill that will regulate state-funded advertising in the media, establishing a limit of 35% of the net annual revenue of the media outlet or the group to which it belongs. According to the government, this new legislation aims to "prevent the economic survival of media outlets from depending on public funds." The new regulations affect traditional media such as newspapers, television, and radio, as well as digital platforms. The draft bill falls under the purview of the Ministry of Public Administration and Digital Transformation, headed by Óscar López (PSOE), who stated at a press conference on Tuesday that "public sector advertising plays an essential role in informing citizens, but it cannot be a means of buying media outlets." According to 2024 data, the advertising market in Spain is worth €13 billion, of which €2.7 billion is allocated to state-funded advertising.

Coinciding with the crisis in the rail sector, where the prices of some alternative transport options like air travel came under scrutiny from consumer organizations due to fears of abusive price hikes, the Spanish government has approved a royal decree-law with a mechanism to "limit prices of services or products" in an emergency situation that has disrupted the social and consumer situation. This was announced by the Minister of Social Affairs and Consumer Affairs, Pablo Bustinduy, at a press conference this Tuesday, after the Council of Ministers meeting.

Since the boom Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms dictate everything users see and feel on mobile devices. In fact, the algorithm not only makes recommendations but also influences the advertising users receive on social media based on their socioeconomic status and gender. Through geolocation and the type of mobile phone they use, AI identifies the most vulnerable young people and offers them tools to obtain easy, quick, and often fraudulent income. This is demonstrated by a pioneering study from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), which, for the first time, observes how personalized advertising on TikTok and Instagram can reinforce inequalities and stereotypes among young people.

Election polls are inherently open to opinion, especially on the one hand kitchen which may end up taking on a new meaning (now, at the IEC, it already has seven) as a process of elaboration with the salt and pepper of demoscopy, and by a hermeneutics that must be the most important after the biblical one. Those responsible are the donkey of the critics' blows, for example, the tireless director of the CIS (Center for Sociological Research), José Félix Tezanos, a professor at the University of Santiago with numerous publications, who is criticized survey after survey. But for the moment, it's holding up; Jordi Muñoz, also with a spectacular academic resume, was not so lucky; he only lasted three years at the CEO (Center for Opinion Studies).

In a world where it's increasingly difficult to live in Catalan, reading a newspaper in Catalan every day is a space for linguistic freedom. The media are arguably the largest producers of verbal language, and it makes perfect sense that the linguistic debate occupies the top spot in the communications received by the Readers' Ombudsman.

In the previous article, in which we addressed the topic of intrusive advertising, there were two comments in the digital magazine that questioned the possibility of increasing the subscription price to remove ads. One was under a pseudonym, and the other was from Josep Miramunt. I've also received calls in the same vein, which can be summed up as the classic monetary question: How much are we talking about? What would the subscription be worth if we charged it for the cost of advertising?

Hated, hated Carla. You say you're an intern, and on the radio you keep saying it. You have no filter whatsoever and you say everything. It's time for you to come out, saying you're Carla, an intern, and that today they "let you do" a radio spot. They dictated it to you, Carla. No intern says that word. cool, which only we norantaires say. Make the ad, but don't try to engage in any fourth-wall radio exercises. You say it's "about the digital kit, which basically gives you up to 1,000 euros for a computer and 2,000 for an invoicing program and a website." You won't catch me. I've had enough with the Moves plan, the 5,000-euro subsidy for electric cars. They gave it to the dealer in advance, deducting it from the price of the car. They should have granted it to me more than a year ago and I'm still waiting for it; in the meantime, I'm paying off the advance credit. "You can do it with kitidigital.cat. They help you with everything and are cool", you say. Oh, come on. How long does it take? And you ask me to enter the page before the funds run out, but I don't believe you because you have been asking us for months at all times. It's like in the market the "They leave them out of my hands". If it were true, you would keep quiet. But I endure everything stoically, except when you say you've been told to emphasize it and you ask me if you've emphasized it enough.

It's an all-too-familiar experience: we're engrossed in a movie or TV show when, suddenly, a commercial break starts, so loud that we're forced to quickly grab the remote control to turn it down. This is known as loudness contrast. The National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) has launched a public consultation to determine how to measure loudness levels (loudness, in English) from TV programming and advertisements, in response to recurring complaints about it, to determine whether the networks are engaging in this bad practice.

When, at the age of 21, Xavier Bosch (Barcelona, ​​​​1967) visited New York City for the first time, the impression was so strong that three decades later he needed to return to write it, but from the point of view of a young aspiring publicist, Edda Leveroni. The girl stars Diagonal Manhattan, I return to the Writer and Journalist's Column after a brief hiatus in Universe. If March 32 (2023) focused on "the dangers of political propaganda" and had previously delved into the lights and shadows of journalism, here "closes the tableau on communication" focusing on its "most luminous branch, advertising." And he does so based on the story of a young woman who makes her way to the United States – and who learns to love – while her father tries to resolve several crises he has at the advertising agency he founded in Barcelona.

They have named them as Equality Stamps, but Correos' supposedly anti-racist advertising campaign has turned out so badly that its good intentions have been read as a reaffirmation of the structural racism it wants to fight. Coinciding with the European Month of Diversity and the first anniversary of the murder of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis, the state company has put into circulation a collection of stamps imitating different skin tones, and increasing their price as they become lighter. The result is that the stamp of less value (0,70 euros) is the darkest and in progression the most expensive is the lightest (1,60 euros).