Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Their teenage children may not feel as strongly about adverts because children of DVR buyers, unlike DVR buyers themselves, have not self-selected for wanting to skip ads.
Jusy my $0.02.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
between channel surfing and ad skipping?
Just based on personal observation, I notice most young people don't skip ads, but rather start watching another program. Their hyper short-term attention spans drive them to find new content instead of finishing the content they were originally watching. A teen will watch 10 minutes of 5 different shows in an hour, without having to use the skip button on the dvr at all.
Older people, with greater attention spans, want to continue the program they were watching, and thus use the technology to skip the ads in order to watch the entire program.
The last bit in your post made me think...so prepare for a little ramble... Is today's society really any different than in the past? Corporate sponsorship of such things as stadiums is relatively new, but every time I read an old newspaper (I'm talking Wild West to Great Depression) I am fascinated by the blatant advertising for snake oil remedies and get-rich-quick gold rush schemes. It was right out there on the front page, too. Are we really any different today in America than the rowdy Chinese and Indian markets of yesterday? Perhaps the only difference is that these ads come faceless, in print or in video, rather than a hard-up vendor pushing his wares on the market corner.
To that end, why are there so many ads? Well, ads simply *work*. If they didn't, there would be no marketing departments and no billboards, no jingles on the radio, no Super Bowl extravaganza commericials.
I also think ad dollars (and the inevitable ads they pay for) save the average American a lot of money each year. How, you might say? Ad sales finance ventures that may otherwise be unprofitable or unsustainable. When Google became more than just the new kid on the block, and needed to finance a "real" business, they turned to ad sales for revenue. Broadcast TV is free to the public only because advertisers pay for airtime. I cannot imagine a scenario where ABC/NBC/CBS could stay in business broadcasting for free, without the life support of ad sales. Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. Even if 13 minutes of every half hour program is advertising, I get to watch an episode of [your favorite show] for free, courtesy of Tide or Tampax or Ford or whichever ad was on while I was digging in the fridge for some mustard on my sandwich. Unfortunately, those broadcasters (and most cable networks) are now addicted to this revenue and try to find more new places to sell ad space, like in-show interstitials.
Does some advertising go to far? Certainly. There's no need for annoying interstitials during a show, especially when it covers up an important part of the action. Do ad dollars shape the world we see today? Of course. Some of our most American retreats are named for advertising. Wrigley Field for example...possibly the first stadium named for an advertiser. It's a historic name now, but we're all weary of Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T Wireless/Minute Maid Park and the Nokia Sugar Bowl. (That said, I would have hated to see Candlestick Park in San Francisco fade away into the shadows over something simple like the naming rights...my all time favorite ballpark, and I'm not even from California)
Ads can be annoying and overdone, but they are a product of a free capitalistic society. Considering the available societal alternatives (China, Myanmar, and Cuba come to mind), I'll take a few ads and nearly constant product placement. Besides, I didn't buy a Tivo for nothing!
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
What about all the ads for other BBC programmes? Trailers, promos, Radio 1 DJ ego-vertising? I sure skip those! I even skip the credits of most BBC shows now that they shrink them down to 1/8 screen size...
Yes we're different. Not perhaps, different than a MARKET earlier, the purpose of a market is, afterall, to SELL stuff. But different in the pervasiveness. This has many reasons. One is a large selection of goods that are really quite equivalent to the buyer, where marketing tries to create incentive to select brand A over brand B on reasons other than price alone when really the differences are debatable. Another is the rising distance (physical and otherwise) between producer and consumer. You don't -know- the guy growing your potatoes anymore. And so mass-marketing has taken over from reputation and word-of-mouth. The worst is, though, that it is EVERYWHERE. Walk down a street in Berlin, and the Brandenburger Tor, one of the most famous landmarks there is is under renovation, and covered with a GIGANTIC telecom-banner. Your shopping-cart has advertising on the handlebar. So does the fuel-pistol-thing when you refuel. All the products you buy are packaged in advertising. TV has more comercials than programming, radio ain't much better. The Internet is filled with banner-ads and stupid flash-crap. Things wheren't always like this. And I'm not convinced we're better off for it. I'm not in favour of banning advertising or anything. But I *am* in favour of having a reasoned debate about under just which rules we want it. And I don't think "anything goes" is it. There is such a thing as visual pollution.
Yes, lowest user ID, but I'll bet you're sad you called yourself "Pestilence".
On topic: I notice that almost every ad I see contains something dishonest or adversarial.
TV ads are a good source of information for me. They tell me what not to buy. If it's on TV, it's over-priced or unnecessary, with few exceptions. Otherwise the advertiser would not be able to pay, or be willing to pay, the huge cost of TV ads.
I also think ad dollars (and the inevitable ads they pay for) save the average American a lot of money each year. How, you might say? Ad sales finance ventures that may otherwise be unprofitable or unsustainable.
Then such ventures should fail. I have no problem with that.
Advertising makes products that I do want cost more, simple as that. Without spending money trying to convince people who don't want a product that they need it anyway, companies would have a lower overhead and thus could sell for less. Of course, they would sell less overall, and only companies with legitimately useful products would thrive (with the occasional freak exception, of course), but I don't view either of those as necessarily a "bad" thing.
Look at our society, look at the current economic crisis, look at Bratz dolls, and tell me we don't have an outright disease of buying crap we don't need. We have a problem, and we can thank advertising for hefty chunk of that.
Ads can be annoying and overdone, but they are a product of a free capitalistic society.
Just as you can have dinner without gorging yourself to the point of bursting; Just as you can drink without passing out drunk; You can have capitalism without encouraging people to spend more than they have on crap they don't need.
I think you've hit the nail on the head there.
The problem isn't that people are buying things, it's that they're buying things that are truly unneccesary, and in some cases actually harmful.
Taking the example of Bratz dolls, if I had children, I wouldn't even consider buying them. As far as I can see, they're teaching children that being succesful is the same as being famous. For any reason, no matter how degrading.
It appears that society agrees though. The person named as the most popular role model in the UK for teenage girls recently was Amy Winehouse. Which leads me to think I should probably leave the country, before another generation of kids grow up who believe they're entitled to fame just because they exist, instead of having to work for it. After all, if Amy can do it just by getting wasted in front of cameras now and again, why shouldn't they?
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.