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.""

Comments

Ads on TV

[shird]

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.

Re:Ads on TV

[Zathrus]

I think the recall has something to do with recognising an ad that youve seen previously

Perhaps. But both my wife and myself have been FF'ing through commercials (at 20x - 2x is too slow, 60x usually too fast) and will see a commercial that either looks interesting, is for some product we want to watch commercials for (generally her employer or former employer), or have heard about and want to watch (like the Nike soccer streaker commercial).

Obviously it's only the first one that would be of interest to advertisers - the second is a non-sell and the third requires someone to have watched it in the first place. And while the first one doesn't happen very often, neither does our watching commercials at all. I'd say it's about equal in occurance to the others.

Fact of the matter is, however, most commercials are even crappier than most shows. I only watch the shows I like. I've been stuck watching commercials at friends' and relatives' houses and... wow... no wonder so many people think TV sucks.

Only fast forwarding through ads

[doormat]

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 inventor of the Pause Button

[Matey-O]

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.

At least people are watching the TiVo'd ads

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

LA Times article

[JoeCotellese]

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.

Don't you love spin ?

[tmark]

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 ...

Re:Makes sense.

[mosch]

This especially true in cases where the advertiser can directly or indirectly control which frames are displayed during fast-forward. TiVo (and most other PVRs) only display P frames while fast-forwarding, so in the case of DirecTV, or digital-cable based PVRs, the content producers can make sure that the full frames will be ones with a few key images, and some large, easy to read corporate logos.

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.

TiVo could make ads even better

[rjwoodhead]

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.