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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.""
does this mean we will have faster adds on TV?? FP
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.
If recall is just as good in fast-forward mode, advertisers should wonder why they need to pay for 30-second slots :-)
Perhaps we'll start seeing reverse-blipverts...
Heh, if fast forwarding through the ads provides the same information content as watching the whole thing, imagine what a waste of time watching advertisements is!
-- shayborg
you know, I have tivo and hate ads, yet I always stop fast forwarding when the "great taste-less filling" ad comes up ... (for those that haven't heard about it, it is with two hot babes that beat each other up over beer)
I also regulary watch the Mitsubishi ads too, those are pretty fun
all we need are fun ads
h.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. =)
I think TiVo should build an IR sensor into the front of the unit like the ones in auto-flush urinals. When youre playing back a recorded episode it could sense when you leave the room for a beer and automatically edit out the commericals...
Have you seen my stapler?
If you're waiting for a commercial to finish, you aren't really paying attention, just waiting, and snoozing... On the other hand, if your finger is on the fast-forward button, you're paying attention so you don't zoom past the start of the next scene, so you're more likely to catch pieces of the commercial inadvertently.
The conscious decision to fast forward makes more of a mental impact then dozing thru the whole litany of Smiling happy people getting full filled thru spot less shirts.
This should be read as scathing critique of the add agencies ability not something to do with Tivo.
I once read that the metabolism of a typical teenager watching TV, is lower that same person sleeping. (can find it via google)
Go ahead download some illegal content from Kazaa at least it will stimulate our intellect.
Help fight continental drift.
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.
The filling, I mean. Great, or taste-less?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
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
...if an advertiser want me to watch their ads, they ought to make their ads worth watching.
Some subway systems have ads on their tunnel walls that are meant to be viewed at the speed of a moving train. In the future, perhaps advertisers targeting Tivo users will buy an extra-long commercial slot to play a greatly slowed-down version of their regular ad that appears normal when fast-forwarded.
Of course, Tivo will immediately counter with a fast-fast-forward mode for such ads, which will be met with even more slowed-down spots, and so on...
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
Yeah, but did P&G know about the select-play-select-3-0-select hack?
(dunno what that means? google "tivo 30 second skip hack")
I didn't like fast forwarding thru commercials because I had to pay too much attention. But now I just hit that little time-warp button 8 times and walla, i'm back to watching the show.
Only time I watch commercials is when I recognize one I like and then instant-replay jump back to its start.
These researchers are concentrating their effort on what crap - to study who fast-forwards what when and why? No wonder we have not cured cancer, or sent men and women to the moon again since 1972. This useless research serves NOTHING except Proctor & Gamble wastefulness. I will not buy any of their products now
Crap like this makes me want to scream at the lab. I slave for my sh*thead supervisor, and this is what others get paid to research?! I hope all they die in trafic accident.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Product Placement.
The conclusion is the structure of cable monopolies is preventing rapid adoption.
Hmm... That's just fucking bizzare.... especially since Comcast and Cox (2 of the top cable companies... especially since Comcast now owns AT&T) are all Tivo investors.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
Incidentally, I just realized that we've since purchased two Sprint PCS cell phones. Hmmm...
Anyway, I think this is just a challenge to marketers and ad-makers: make interesting commericials. I mean, come on - some of those commercials are just *bad*. And not the good, I'll remember it because it was so bad, bad. I'm talking *bad*. Some days it saddens me to think that there is actually someone who got paid to sign off and give the "ok" to a certain commercial. Oh well.
Never use a big word when a dimunitive one will suffice.
It's french. It means basically "there it is". When used as an interjection in English it is used to call attention to something. It is not walla. Though, I guess if you're part of the "freedom fries" crowd you need a new word... Hmm... maybe "Freedomla!"
Anyhow, back to that 30 second skip button. I use mine so often I'm surprised the decal on the button hasn't come off. The only annoyance is that most commercials aren't 4 minutes, some are 3, some are 2, some are even 3 1/2. Luckily when I go too far I just hit the 8-seconds-back button a few times and voila, no commercials!
What you are seeing here are merely volleys in a price negotiation. Don't mistake it for reality. The last thing *anybody* - advertisers, networks, clients - wants is for media delivery to be accurately measured.
(rant on)
All advertising rates are based on The Big Lie, and anything that interferes with this shared revenue-producing delusion is summarily dropped or compromised out of existance.
Audit bureaus came up with the idea of actually counting the number of magazines shipped and then publishing the reports. Magazines then came up with what they called "pass along readership" where they make arbitrary guesses that more than one person reads a single issue. Agencies went along with it, because if clients knew the truth they wouldn't know what the hell to do, and when they don't know what to do they stop spending money.
If I recall correctly, 'People Magazine' was saying that they had a pass-along readership of 18. As in 18 people read every issue because, by their logic, 'People' sat in a lot of doctor's office waiting rooms.
There have been many innovations in television measurement, including Nielsen boxes that measure whose watching a set based on their heat signature, but they've been quietly retired with mumbles about cost or privacy or whatever. They then continue to wildly massage the numbers in the process of projecting truly aweful diary and box data to national viewership.
The fact is that the livelyhood of networks, magazines, outdoor ads, agencies, and the marketing departments at clients is supported by wasted dollars, and your safe bet is on any technology that allows this waste to continue. Anything that threatens to be both accurate an ubiquitous will never see the light of day.
(rant off)
So I read the story like this:
"Researchers in the marketing department of the largest advertising spender in the world have recently declared that despite incontrovertable evidence that people are fast-forwarding through the commercials it took them quite a long time to think up, they actually remember them despite the lack of sound and their carefully-crafted characters running around like time-lapse ants. So despite this incontrovertable evidence, there is fortunately no reason to cut their budgets, fire their agency and lay them all off. When reached for comment, their advertising agency agreed with them a full fifteen percent, which coincidentaly was the amount of their fee."
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Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
They haven't controlled for a possible variable: maybe this just means that TiVo users are smarter than everyone else.
If you don't pretend to be anyone, are you?
These articles just keep coming, talking about how even though we are substituting a pay service with a free one the companies who own the pay service keep making the same profits.. I just don't really buy it. I haven't bought a CD in about 5 years, save 1 or 2 rare cds that I couldn't find mp3s of, even in my well connected IRC world. If I fast forward commercials on tivo and recognize them, the recognition only takes place because I've seen the commercials before. For me, I'll bet this study would fail because I have no TV at all, I just watch divx episodes of Sealab all day. It's all a big beautiful rebellion against market-shaped consciousness and pay-per-living. The more we seperate the means of our survival from our lifestyle, the more we do not understand how the work we do fuels the means for our lifestyle. Guess we're boned. *shrug*
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
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"
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.
What kind of bear? Do your friends live near a forest? A zoo? A bar populated by large hairy gay men?
Ads do three different thigns:
Pay for the show/otherwise amuse us.
Give Name recognition to a product
If a service/product is new/unknown, it informs the public about it.
Only the last service can not be done via fast-forward viewing. Frankly it is so rarely used that is not that big a deal..
Yes, advertisers claim that a "good" ad will get people to buy coke over pepsi or whatever, but that is bullcrap. People might try it once, but no one, not even a status obssessed teen really buys one product instead of another because an ad told them to. (But they will insist on a "known" product that was advertised over an "un-known".)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com