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)."

Comments

perhaps they are recording the ads

[Le'BottomEh]

and skipping them when they view it at a later date. That's what my friends do with their TiVo.

Re:perhaps they are recording the ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Among things the report revealed is that many DVR viewers do not fast-forward through ads. TFA says they aren't. I myself don't often skip past commercials on my TiVo. But I also am not paying attention, I'm usually doing some other thing at my computer during the commercials (much like I did before I got TiVo and had to watch everything "live")

Re:perhaps they are recording the ads

[Le'BottomEh]

I don't own a TiVo but I have friends who do. I'm glad that people find it useful. I, myself, don't really have much time to watch TV and won't go shit crazy if I miss an episode of Battlestar Galactica. When I'm actively watching a show at my friend's place, we always skip the commercials. However, you are right, if you want some background noise while you work, you probably won't care if it's commercials or not.

Re:perhaps they are recording the ads

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I heard an NPR story on this issue. A study found not only that most DVR users do play the commercials, but even users who self-reported skipping ads always or almost always, actually watched far more ads than they thought. I've find that I sometimes start doing something else when the commercial starts... thus forgetting to skip the commercials (about half of the commercials for any given recorded show). On the other hand, I think it's safe to say that any 'high suspense' shows will have a much higher rate of skipped commercials.

Re:perhaps they are recording the ads

[misleb]

I use the TiVo as a tool to make my life better.

My life is much better since I started indiscrimnately blocking/skipping advertisements. Same thing with SPAM and email. Once I took the time to implement a really good spamassassin filter, my life got better.

. I use the TiVo as a tool to make my life better. Not so I can be an Anial Hyper Liberal and put work and effort to Fast Forward threw comericals just because they are there.

Work and effort? I just download the shows from bittorrent where someone else has already cut out the commercials. And when I was using MythTV to record them myself, Myth automatically skipped the commercials for me. But then, I'm an anal liberal who just wants to block/skip commercials "just because they are there." Though I'm not sure what it is has to do with being "liberal." Do conservatives somehow enjoy selling bits and pieces of their mind/soul to advertisers? Is watching advertisements a "family value?"

Frankly, I'm baffled by anyone who willingly sits through advertisements when skipping them is so easy these days. Is the programming that ya'll watch just so empty and shallow that advertising is just as entertaining? WTF?

It isn't just about idealism, either. You can save a very significant amount of time by skipping ads. 1 hour shows become 40 minute shows. 30 minute shows become 20 minute shows. Not to mention the beneficial effect it has on attention span.

-matthew

Ads

[Vexor]

Ads are used for a lot of stuff. They give you a chance to grab another beverage, run to the bathroom, and so on. These people are probably not viewing them (exception being a particularly funny ad). The better answer might even be they can't find the fast foward button or the pause(for when they do need to get up) on their jumbo multiuse remotes.

some dvrs dont skip adds?

[icebones]

I had no idea that some DVRs wouldn't FF thorough adds. I hope my cable company never "upgrades" to one. It's reached the point that when i actually do watch a show when it airs, I get annoyed that I can't FF through the commercials. The only time i let the comercials run on something I've recorded is when i need to get up for a minute.

Re:Bias....

[mcmonkey]

Did it occur to Nielen that it probably takes users a little longer to get use to the new functions on a DVR so they likely haven't even understood the concept "Oh man you mean I don't have to watch commercials!".

I think they're talking about 7 days after the program is recorded, not 7 days after getting a DVR. I also think most DVR users have seen (and maybe even own) a VCR, so they're probably familiar with the 'fast forward' concept.

I'd say marketing folks might be interested in DVR-use trends and how ads get viewed weeks and months after the original airing, but seeing how many DVDs come with 'now in theatres' commercials, marketing folks have the long term memory of a goldfish and have no idea what is this '3 month' thing you speak of.

DVR

[LordPhantom]

Being an avid DVR-er, my habits are as follows:

1) Start of commercial - hit fast forward 2) Skip back if/when I see something I'm looking for, or a funny looking add 3) Miss the start of the show, curse comcast for not having "skip ahead 30seconds" (I miss my Dish DVR :( ) 4) rewind 5) start watching show (with 5 seconds of last add)

In many ways, DVRs are doing to TV what the internet has done to "print" adds. In most papers there are sidebar adds that you can click on if interested, but ignorable otherwise.

I think that advertisers are going to have to go back to "selling" more and relying on obnoxious/flashy adds less. In the end, people want to know about truly good deals or truly interesting products and will listen to a sales pitch on something they care about, and ignore the stuff they aren't interested in.

Re:Bias....

[Irish_Samurai]

Did it occur to you that DVR technology is not anywhere close to new and that people already get the idea. Hell, the concept of fast forwarding was pretty much introduced with the VCR.

Ads == (bathroom) or (beer) or (snack) + break

[erroneus]

Ads serve the same purpose when live or recorded. It's time to get up and get something or do something. Yeah... it means people are recording the ads and yeah, it does mean the ads should bring more revenue. Now STOP trying to mess with our home recorders!!!

Voting System

[Yvan256]

This is all nice and good, but what I'd like to see is a voting system for TV ads. Digital cable, satellite, PVRs... they all allow some type of feedback, why not implement a voting system so you can vote ads up or down.

That way, annoying ads would be voted down (companies would stop paying to show it) and fun/good ads would be voted up (companies would know what style works).

Maybe add a third option to let them know they're showing it too often. Sometimes I like some ads but they appear so often as to become annoying.

Define "better"

[Mateo_LeFou]

"if you start looking at people with viewers, at least SOME of them will be watching the commercials. That's much 'better' than just assuming none of them ever do."

If you mean "better" in terms of scientific accuracy, you are right. But I'd like to suggest that "assuming none of them ever do" has a useful purpose too:

If you assume none of them ever do, you can convince Congress that the sky is falling and get technological control measures such as the DMCA or worse in place.

Some DVR users may want to watch the ads.

[w3woody]

I fast forward--but for some ads I'll skip back and play the ad. The only reason why I don't like most advertising is because of ad saturation: after the first five hundred times I've seen an ad, the product is permanently burned into my brain--(*twitch* Ditech Mortgages *twitch*), and I don't need to see the ad anymore. Cute ads (the latest Apple Ads), ads for new movies, or for products I've never seen--I'll actually rewind the DVR and watch them.

Hell, with some of the tripe on TV nowadays sometimes the ads are the best part!

Commercials? What commercials?

[jbarr]

Our habits were similar until we built a SageTV system. Now, it goes something like this:

1. After a show completes recording, ShowAnalyzer auto-scans the recording for commercial breaks and flags them. This process completes within about 2-3 minutes of the completion of the recording.

2. We watch the show with SageTV's ComSkip plugin enabled, and when a commercial break begins, playback just jumps forward to the marked end of the commercial break, resuming the show content. It's slicker than snot.

3. Should we want to watch commercials, we either temporarily disable the ComSkip plugin, or we just FF or REW into the marked commercial section.

And the auto-marking is 's amazingly accurate--probably 98% accurate. The combination of SageTV + ShowStopper + ComSkip plugin gives us very successful commercial marking. No, it's not perfect, and sometimes shows get mis-marked, but it's very rare.

Other home-brew DVR's like MythTV and BeyondTV have similar capabilities.

And when we want to do something else (food, bathroom, phone, etc.) it's just a simple press of the Pause or Stop buttons

Commercials are not evil. Forcing us to watch them is.

SageTVTips.com

Re:I think most DVR users don't fast forward.

[veganboyjosh]

It's not like they're researched, designed, and developed to make you feel good...

Re:I think most DVR users don't fast forward.

[Bobartig]

When the 'dreaded' live tv appears (ok, we have IPTV, but it has a live tv buffer all the same), we just pause the tv for about 10 minutes and read/browse until we've cached up enough to skip the rest of the ads. If its a movie (= more ads), we might fix a meal, do some chores, or play video games for half an hour so we can skip them later.