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DVR Viewers Push Ad Ratings Higher
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like DVRs and timeshifting has finally done what many people said it would do: increased overall viewership! USA Today reports: 'Among the things the report revealed is that many DVR viewers do not fast-forward through ads. The viewer total for broadcast network ads goes up 32% when DVR watchers within three days are included, according to Nielsen. For some prime-time shows, it means that DVR viewing, long seen as a threat to advertising, could even bring higher ad prices. NBC's The Office, for example, had a live-plus-three Nielsen commercial rating of 3.36 — higher than the 3.11 it got for the week of May 6 under the traditional Nielsen program rating system.' Makes me wonder where this will lead for my favorite genre shows which by their very nature have a higher DVR component and have seen declining viewership using the older methodology (BSG, SG-1, etc)."
Generally, adverstisers prefer to use "live" to determine rates (some commercials like movie releases can have less of an impact after time passes), broadcasters prefer "live-plus-seven", so I think "live-plus-three" became the compromise to include those people who do watch the show, but just aren't able to watch it live.
I'm not in that industry, but it seems like a pretty decent compromise (and I believe it's quickly becoming the new standard when negotiating ad rates) given the availability of recording devices and the significant amount of delayed viewing that occurs.
File Deletion is Murder.
Your Tivo knows which parts you've fast forwarded through, and which parts you have repeated. All this info is sent back to the mother ship.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Yes, I have noticed that many DVR users, perhaps call them "less sophisticated" ones do not always FF over the ads.
However, we MythTV users don't FF over ads, the skip is instantaneous. The system makes judements, about 95% accurate
over where the ad bounds are. When an ad is coming up, it says "3 minute commercial break" in a pop up and you push
a key to skip it. If it has guessed wrong on the length that's usually obvious, and of course it's obvious on the
start. With technologies like this, which the studios have sued to keep out of PVRs, there will be few who don't
skip the breaks, or who even notice interesting ads and rewind to watch them.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I do fast forward most of the time, but sometimes during that fast forwarding I will actually stop and rewind an ad that grabs my eye.
To me, this shows that people will watch well-made commercials. (Witness: Superbowl commercials. People love them.)