This NYT article has a surprising revelation at the bottom of page two. Jeff Gaspin, the head of entertainment for NBC two years ago, recently streamed two years of the AMC show “Walking Dead” with his 13 year old son – one episode each night, without ads. But when they went to watch the current season live at prime time, they found the advertisements broke the tension. He said, “I hate to say this to the AMC executives and everybody else in the business, but I will never watch ‘Walking Dead’ live again.”
One estimate from Nielsen indicates that there are 129 million DVR’s in the U.S. that can record and skip over ads. It’s not clear how they are distributed across 115 million households, or how many are used for this purpose, but without a doubt, a large percent of Americans can do it.
The three types of TV viewers:
1) Those who pay for TV programming that avoid advertisements, like HBO and Starz.
2) Those who record programs so they can fast forward over ads.
3) Those who watch ads.
This spawns big problems for advertisers:
- Lower impact from fewer viewers.
- A large population of people that they can’t reach, who could be the very people they want to reach.
- A potential that TV media cannot properly measure the “fast forward” people, leading to inflated costs for placing ads.
What’s the answer? Advertisers will either have to pay people to watch their ads, or they’ll need to make advertisements that people go out of their way to watch.
watching ads on cable tv becomes boring. Many times – a one hour program will have the same 6 ads delivered (sometimes in the same order) at every commercial break during that hour. I like watching clever ads – but not the same ones over and over.
dukenews.duke.edu/2010/05/tivo
Gren:
If you look at the most recent study with the largest sampling of DVR usage you will find that 95 percent of tv viewing is still done live. If the 5% is the most important consumer then yes perhaps we are doomed, however research indicates otherwise. Hope that you enjoy the link to the article done by Duke University. thanks again,
sarah
First the disclaimer. I work at WPXT-TV and WPME-TV so I have a vested (and maybe conflicted) interest in this subject.
Both Kathy and Sarah make great points. Kathy raises the issue of the creativity of the ads. The Super Bowl is an example of creative ads being as entertaining as the game! Most viewers, when asked, are fine with commercials as long as the commercials are relevant to them and done in a creative, respectful way. Bad ads should be run out of town. They cause viewers to tune out, don’t get the desired result for the advertiser and leave everyone feeling uncomfortable.
The study that Sarah provided sheds some factual light on this issue. We hear a lot about video-on-demand, DVR playback, watching TV on tablets, computers and smartphones…but at the end of the day…the overwhelming majority of people are still watching live TV on a big set in their living room or family room. The real story is that the “second screens” (computers, tablets, laptops) are giving us more opportunities to watch TV…so the amount of time spent watching TV continues to increase.
As a final thought, TV is moving in the direction of niches. Yes, niches are, by definition, smaller subsets so the number of people watching a particular channel may be smaller…but the niches allow advertisers to concentrate on more valuable viewers…people who are interested in the advertiser’s product or service.
The end game in advertising is figuring out how to get the right ad in front of the right viewer. When we get to the point where the ads we see will be interesting and relevant to us….everyone will win!