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Youngsters Skip DVR Ads Less Than Seniors
Dekortage writes "Analyzing DVR viewing research, Ad Age has noted something unexpected: older DVR users are more likely to skip ads than younger DVR users. The skew is particularly apparent among men: 50% of seniors skipping all the ads, but only 20% of teens do so. Women of any age group tend to be around 35%. Ad Age hypothesizes that younger viewers 'just pay attention to other media when the ads are on TV or, worse yet, perhaps the TV is just 'background music'... I always thought that ad skipping was a major benefit of DVRs. Do you skip all the ads?"
I don't know if anyone was confused by the abbreviation, but anyway, DVR seems to be Digital Video Recorder. Maybe it's just because I'm from sweden. Anyway, hope it helps someone.
If noone rtfa, then what's the slashdot effect?
I love the TiVo easter egg for enabling 30-second skip. I don't know how I lived without it before. I've heard of Myth and other software DVRs stripping out commercials altogether, but I enjoy the TiVo service.
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I'd rather suggest that it's a selection bias. Among young people, TV is a lot less common than among older people, who often use it instead of social contacts (who are either dead or old and not very mobile themselves).
Lots of young people don't even have a TV anymore. It's definitely a pattern. Far from a majority, but while in our parents generation a TV simply was part of every home, in our generation you're not looked at funny anymore when you say you don't have a TV. It's not a big deal, because it's fairly common.
So, the study group self-selects. Those who have a DVR have a TV as well. First link. Those who have a TV aren't simply "everyone", but those who more or less decided to have a TV. Second link. Why do you decide to get a TV in an age where half of the program is ads? Because you don't care much about that. Third link. If you don't care much about ads, you don't expend much energy to skip them. And that's what the study has shown. Any correlation to age probably goes more through this self-selection than through any other age-related attribute.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That's why I liked watching things like Star Trek on the BBC (used to be BBC 2 at 6pm). You didn't get any adverts and so the show was 45 minutes long. Follow it up by a couple of episodes of Simpsons and you're done by 7:30pm instead of 8pm :)
Ditto for Formula One and other sport - much better on the BBC when it doesn't get interrupted by adverts (football - the real one - they chat for a few minutes of the 15 minute break because of adverts and Formula One they have to put adverts during the race).
I don't know if it is unfamiliarity with the adverts or an actual occurrence, but the few times I've watched American TV rather than UK TV then the American TV seems to have more adverts. Having said that, now that I've got Sky then watching some of the satellite channels evens the match up a bit. Maybe it was just terrestrial that had fewer ad breaks.
MythTV automatically marks and skips all commercials , with fairly high accuracy. It's a rare event that I have to manually do anything. Most commercials are just gone.
http://www.mythtv.org/
They are only between programs, so no skipping them when watching something you recorded.
It is actually worse than you mentioned on some cable channels. SciFi and USA network are two of the worst. They seem to have more time in commercials than in the shows. The worst part is when one watches a movie on one of these channels it has been cut terribly to fit.
On the flip side, once in awhile it'll screw up and skip over entire sections of the program because it thought they were a commercial. Unless MythTV's commercial skip feature has gotten better in the last few years I found it to be very hit-or-miss and found it was much more reliable to just 30-second-skip forward over commercials.
The trouble with claiming to have the lowest user ID in a thread is that someone with one lower will inevitably show up just to post and annoy you. N00b.
Now, as for the topic at hand, MythTV does allow automated commercial skipping, but you have to remember that most DVRs consumers use do not support anything more than a glorified fast-forward like a VCR. My Scientific Atlanta PVR from the cable company is like that and doesn't even offer skip feature. I believe TiVos are the same way unless you use the code to unlock the 30-second skip feature.
It sort of skips ads. Not intelligently. I have it, and the button on the remote can be set to one of several distinct time frames, and that's about it. It's a 'dumb' feature in that it doesn't try to figure out how long the ad is or anything, it just moves forward a set amount of time. I can't remember off the top of my head what the options are, but generally you can get through ads in about two or three clicks. It's a bit annoying, but not "I'm going to kill the programmer" annoying.
No the "I'm going to kill the programmer after I hunt him down and torture him for three weeks" 'feature' that FiOS has is the general buginess of the on-demand stuff. You push the button and about 1 out of 3 times it will simply get confused and refuse to give you access to anything for about 2 minutes. If you are scheduled to record ANYTHING during that time, you are screwed because it will not start recording, and it will not let you fix that fact either (grrr).
Another annoyance where I'd love to hunt someone down is the recently discovered 'feature' that means if you are going to watch something on DVR, but have 2 shows scheduled to record, you can't have it paused at the moment they are scheduled to start recording, or it will malfunction and fail to record, but if you try to fix this like 2 seconds after the fact because you've realized what's happening, you can't because the machine thinks its already recording (but isn't) and it will only give you the option to cancel the recording (which doesn't work). Argh!
That said, overall, if you learn to avoid the one bug, and that starting to watch something On Demand just before a taping is scheduled to start is probably a bad idea, then you'll be okay. Annoying (as in, let me shoot someone so their replacement will have motivation to fix it), but not a deal breaker, because overall they have an excellent selection of channels for the price, and their internet service is quite good and very reliable (at least it has been for me so far), which is something I really appreciate. I've never hit bandwidth caps or shaping or anything, and I'd know--I use torrents and isos quite frequently, so there.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
I use this little trick to enable 30-second skip on my Comcast DVR. I forget the brand... I think it's Motorola, but I'm not sure. It's certainly not a Tivo. http://dcortesi.com/2005/05/04/motorola-dct6412-comcast-dvr-30-second-skip/
sudo eat my shorts
roger that. i've been using mythtv in NL where the ads are seem to be more arbitrarily placed in a programme. ad skip doesnt work in NL for me.
-- $_='ab-bc ratvarre';tr"'a-z'"'n-za-m'";print
I can't speak for the other countries you listed...
Max.
I'm in a different camp of sorts. I have a DVR to record when I am not there, of course, but the main advantages are:
1. Skip commercials, so I can watch 3 30 minute shows in one hour. It's a better use of my time and it makes the shows flow better to not have the interuptions.
2. I let shows stack up on the drive, and watch a few in a row. I hate "to be continued" episodes without the next episode handy. I usually stay a couple episodes back just for this reason.
3. I like to watch runs of old programs. I can tear through a whole years worth of series in 2 to 4 weeks. Shows have better continuity when you watch them closer in time. Same reason I buy DVDs of TV shows. (Firefly comes to mind, and Futurama)
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Max.