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Study Finds Tivo Less of a Threat to Advertisers
talboito writes "AdAge.com reports that an internal study by Proctor and Gamble concludes that Tivo viewers who fast forward through ads recall their content at similar rates as those watching at normal speeds. The article concludes with a choice quote by Proctor and Gamble's former head of research on the significance of the results; "[Proctor and Gamble] may still go out and try to browbeat the networks into giving them a lower CPM [cost per thousand viewers] on the basis of it, but they'd want to know either way.""
as the FP poster stated, this could mean FFW ads on regular TV, could get 5+ times as many ads in the allocated 5mins or whatever the break is. :)
However, I think the recall has something to do with recognising an ad that youve seen previously, and the FFW glimpse prods your memory back to that ad - hence achieving brand recognition, which is the overall goal. But just seeing the ad in FFW only, probably wouldnt get the desired effect, especially with no sound.
I.O.U One Sig.
Regardless of their internal report, Tivo-like devices in the long run will be the demise of the 30-second commercial and commercial breaks.
Product placement is the unfortunate future.
Seriously, this doesn't seem to surprising to me. Just getting the image of your brand into someone's head is very important. How often can you tell what an advertisment is for, even with, say, the audio muted? Quite often for me.
I'll make the obligatory reference to blip-verts now, since we're talking about ads and speed. =)
Whats interesting is that this only covers fast forwarding through ads, and not skipping ads entierly (a la Replay TV). So I presume P&G will still want discounted rates no matter how these results turned out.
Also, what I found more interesting was that in their testing, people barely remembered anything. So it makes sense why commercials are getting more annoying, since it will stick in your head longer.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Must have had newborn kids. This PVR has SAVED my TV viewing life. The ability to a)pause live TV, b) rewind when you missed critical dialog during a screamfest, and 3) Watch your favorite 9pm (MST) TV show when you have enough banked time to watch it is invaluable...
Cause sometimes the only time I can watch CSI: Miami is Saturday at 9am.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I'm inclined to think that the retention might be HIGHER for TiVo users. At least they're sitting there in front of the TV watching the screen intently waiting for the optimal second to release the FF button.
Then, of course, 9 times out of 10 you overshoot, and have to run back, meaning that you actually get most of the last ad at regular speed (I can already hear the ad execs charging more for the last spot)
Compare this to 'regular' viewing where many, many people get up for a bathroom break, grab a drink, bite to eat, even (gasp!) converse amongst themselves during the commercial break and therefore don't see ANY ads at all.
Of course, this won't result in the 1/5 duration ad since those TiVo users will now see them at 1/25 normal speed and there has to be a point where there aren't enough frames for the human eye to discern the content - that is until you start talking subliminal messaging, which is a whole other issue.
The LA Times is running an article discussing why PVRs aren't in every home. The conclusion is the structure of cable monopolies is preventing rapid adoption.
The headline suggests that recall of ads is the same whether or not someone is fast-forwarding through it. Yet the bulk of the actual article details the statistical problems with the drawing of this conclusion, as well as the likelihood that at the fastest speeds, it's highly unlikely there's anything close to meaningful recall.
...
Of course, the majority of readers who find the headline somehow compatible with their world view will go on and on about it
How can this comment be moderated as a 3, then moderated down as overrated, when a practically identical comment is immediately after it and moderated to a 5 without any overrated modifiers?
I don't mean to whine, but this just boggles my mind.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
For the rest of the images, they can just subtly change the colors enough that it should force the mpeg encoder to encode a new P frame instead of another I frame. It wouldn't be noticeably visible to the viewer, but it would allow some amount of control as to which frames are seen by the PVR user.
I can't seem to google it, but there's been some interesting research into how to make ads effective for both regular-time viewing, and PVR fast-forward viewing.
Sure, but the way AT&T cable was built means it is 40+ different cable systems, right down to the CPE. So they need 40+ different TiVo boxes to get the same sort of features that DirecTV gets (high level of integration so you don't need to tell the TiVo what channes you do/don't get, and so it never misses a channel change, and so it can record mroe then one thing at once...)
Cable companies like TiVo, they see the much much lower churn rate DTV gets from it's DirecTV w/ TiVo users then the normal ones. They just can't get the same product because they screwed themselves in the past by making sure no 2 cable companies used the exact same broadcast system.
I've suggested to TiVo a couple of times that they make a minor tweak to their software and publish a protocol that lets advertisers mark (using one of the vertical blank lines) the frames that constitute the start of a commercial and the important frames.
Then as I FF (I use the second level) through the commercial break, instead of seeing random frames from the commercial, I'll see the frames the advertiser wants me to see. And if I hit play, TiVo will know where to rewind to in order to show me the commercial that interested me.
Everyone wins; I don't waste any time (FF speed is the same as before) watching commercials that don't interest me. Advertisers get a chance to interest me. And TiVo gets a valuable new income stream -- market research. They learn, for example, that families with 43 year old white males rarely are interested in douche ads during Farscape.
Taking this a step further, future TiVo devices could shuffle the ads, replacing ads that it is clear that my family won't be interested in with ones that we might be, sort of what google does with their adwords.
No downside for us in this. The zip through the commercials time isn't changed. Because let us face it, what we hate are not commercials, but commercials we are not interested in.
As a side note, one downside of the TiVo FF (even when not at fastest speed) is that I tend to miss ads for upcoming programs that might interest me. This would really help with that.
"World Domination - a fun, family activity"
I haven't had a television signal in my home for almost a year. Whenever I go oever a relative's house you see them basked in the glow of the great american fireplace.
"Anyone want to go for a bear?"
Silence, stirring...
"Guys this is a re-run of a show I didn't care to watch in the first place."
Angry grunting that I'm interrupting their show.
"Say can we at least mute the commercials?"
Objects thrown. Cat's hiss. The room grows darker.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
of course, what teevee execs may be most afraid of is teevee's inefficiency as an advertising medium. the article quoted an expert about how retention rates are low to begin with. if everyone who watched teevee switched to using tivos and never watched commercials again, and if advertisers don't see any effect in their sales, it may be a solid demonstration that teevee ads just aren't worth the money.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.