"TV ad breaks could get longer as rules are reviewed"

[L1]

Yes, the logical change is to permit 9 minutes an hour rather than 8 minutes in primetime, which would see an extra 5 minutes of ads between 6-11pm, where channels tend to stick trailers into breaks rather than scrap the breaks anyhow, though that is more noticeable at the weekend than in the week.

There is of course now the argument that so much of the competition is ad free that they should be looking to lessen the ad load rather than increase it.    I do wish TV companies would be more experimental with the ad loads as even within current rules there are different approaches to be taken - for example rather than always using the maximum 3.5 minute breaks actually looking if a more even weighting of around 2 minutes per break, certainly within programmes, can bring in as much revenue, even if it means placing ads at less watched times.

No commercial channel will willingly have less ads per hours, that's leaving money on the table.

I'm pretty sure when this has been raised previously in relation to funding regional news on ITV that they were actually against because more ad supply would reduce the price of advertising. Of course their position may have changed now, but they have said that previously.