For Broadcast June 4, 2008

After being inspired by those clever people at Channel 4 and Honda (which delivered the live skydiving ad last week), I am proud to announce that this column is being written live. Cue triumphant music.

Actually, I always write my column live, the problem is you only see it "as live". But, as the high profile ad proves, live certainly seems to get people's attention.

The 3-minute 10-second skydiving spot on Channel 4 cost about £550,000 to make, including 19 preparatory jumps over three days (one filmed as a back-up if something went horribly and unbroadcast-ably wrong on the night). But, according to C4, the money and the finger-biting anxiety about whether they could pull it off was worth it.

Some 168,000 additional viewers tuned into C4 just to watch the ad break, an 8% lift to 2.25 million viewers. The fact that the audience watching the 18 sky divers spell out H-O-N-D-A during their jump from 14,000 feet grew at all was big news. The fact that the audience was up by 8% was icing on the cake.

Previous ad break audiences in the 8.10pm time slot during Come Dine with Me have declined by as much as 11%. Drooping audiences during ad breaks are not uncommon, in fact it they are the norm. So can the new norm be increased audiences during breaks? Mike Parker, head of C4's strategic sales, would love to do live ads every night, but says "our blood pressure couldn't take it".

A call to ITV yielded this from a spokesman: "We'd love to do live ads but it is really difficult from a technical point of view and there are also clearances processes we have to go through."

ITV has done "lots" of "as live" adverts to go with its event television, said the spokesman. OK, OK. But clearly Grays Inn Road is not taking the Honda ad tagline to heart: "Difficult is Worth Doing". The fact is that, despite the risk, this was event advertising.