Last week in a meeting with Bear Sterns, David Poltrack, CBS Chief Research Officer and President of CBS Vision, reasserted that DVRs are actually a good thing for advertisers. "For the big shows--the most popular shows--it's quite feasible that there'll be more delivery of advertising exposures than they have now--even discounting for all the fast forwarding." Poltrack claims that the DVR playback of these shows will actually increase current ratings by roughly 4 percent. He went on to say with the proliferation of DVRs in US households, it will actually translate to higher commercial ratings for networks to sell to advertisers.
Sounds like a rather rosy scenario for the TV networks. And if you're shaking your head, I'm with you.
As a DVR user, when watching shows in "playback" or "time-shifted", I always skip the commercials. In talking with other DVR users, I know they do the same.
Why would someone watch the ads, unless they were in advertising or some related industry? Please, please try and sell me something before I get back to Grey's Anatomy (Of course, I'd rather hear about a new salad dressing than see if Denny is going to kick the bucket.)
We may still be in need of the data to support this mode of viewing, but in the interim it intuitively makes sense that people are skipping ads. What doesn't make sense is the idea that advertisers are actually going to benefit from DVR proliferation. As the pendulum swings and consumers are becoming more empowered and enabled with technology, it doesn't do our clients justice to buy into this traditional, push-marketing spin.
I totally agree. "Big media" is still in major denial. Sad for them - but great news for consumers!
Posted by: Jeff Flemings - blog editor | September 23, 2006 at 08:53 AM
Thanks to our DVR, my 6 year-old gets frustrated that he can't fast-forward through commercials that interrupt his cartoons. They've already lost his generation.
Posted by: Colin McKay | September 20, 2006 at 07:09 PM