Blipverts

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A short burst of advertisement or promotional content, often transmitted in rapid succession during television programming
2. A fictional concept from media that represents a technology for condensed marketing messages
3. A brief and effective way to convey information or marketing in a fast-paced format during commercial breaks

Etymology: In the 1985 British television film "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future," a television network runs ads so compressed and rapid that they overload the nervous systems of some viewers. The film's name for these ads was "blipvert," a blend of "blip" and "advert." The coinage was pure science fiction, a satirical guess at where commercial broadcasting might go. The plural, "blipverts," is simply the regular plural of that invented noun. The word's power comes from its sound: "blip" suggests something brief and electronic, and "advert" is the familiar British shortening of "advertisement," so the compound packs a whole idea of ultra-fast commercial television into one word.