Big Picture Big Sound

News Flash! DVR Users Skip Commercials!

French market research firm Ipsos recently conducted a study of 4,000 British households who owned at least one DVR (Digital Video Recorder). Apparently 90 percent of those surveyed use their DVR to skip commercials, either by time-shifting recordings and watching them later or simply tuning in a few minutes after the show begins, then skipping commercials to catch up to real-time.

While this may seem obvious to those who already own a DVR such as Tivo or TV-Guide-Based HDD recorder, it could mean trouble for advertisers who may not be getting all the eyeballs they think they're getting.

When you look at the highly coveted 18 to 34-year-old demographic in the study (the ones who are starting to get some money and aren't afraid to spend it), the trend is even clearer with 97 percent saying they skip ads all or almost all of the time.

Companies like Tivo try to appease advertisers in many different ways. For example, if you buy a DVD recorder or HDD recorder with integrated Tivo then it's impossible to edit out the ads, even when storing the show to DVD for long term storage. Plus Tivo has announced that it will be showing advertiser logos and special offers over ads when you skip through them. And since Tivo effectively "records" its users' actions, they have long been selling consumer behavior patterns back to advertisers so the advertisers can see which commercials (or wardrobe malfunctions) are most popular with their viewing audience.

But Tivo is not the only game in town. These days, TV Guide's OnScreen guide service (free to consumers, licensing fee paid by hardware manufacturers) offers similar advantages to Tivo but without the monthly fees, restrictions or "big brother-like" two-way communications. TV Guide OnScreen features an integrated onscreen TV guide, simple recording, the ability to pause and rewind live TV and automatic capture of show title and meta data into recordings. Hour-long TV shows can now be viewed in around 45 minutes, without all those pesky commercials, and without having to pay a monthly fee for the Tivo service.

TV Guide OnScreen isn't perfect - guide data is not as solid as Tivo in its reliability yet, as it depends on local broadcasters to embed the guide data into their signals, which doesn't always happen properly - but it's a viable alternative. And there are similar license-free guides available on the internet for recording and archiving of television broadcasts on your computer.

How will the poor advertisers survive? Answer? Well, it's pretty simple. Do what they're doing in the movies - product placement. Fellow Big Picture Big Sound founder Joe Lozito and I were recently treated to a preview release of the film "The Fantastic Four" a few days before its official opening in New York City. The event was hosted by Samsung who were proud of their product sponsorship in the film - a whopping 60+ products featured (good thing the film didn't suck!). Everywhere you turn in the film, there is a Samsung camera, cell phone, monitor or TV. I'm not sure how much Samsung paid for all this but the brand equity they built up was considerable.

At one point the movie screen is filled with a bank of 4 Samsung monitors with the Samsung logo front and center (which led to much giggling from the Samsung marketing folks perched in the seats in front of us). And you know what? More power to them. The studios need advertising dollars to stem the tide of lost revenue from dwindling movie theater attendance and companies need creative new ways to promote their brands and their products. Win Win.

After all, when the commercial is part of the show, how do you skip it?