Ever since digital video recorders like TiVo came out, people have been prophesying the death of commercials because people can fast forward through them to only watch the show they recorded. But reality proves otherwise.
Nielsen Company reports – in the first in-depth study of DVR habits – that while there are many traits surrounding DVR usage, a huge number of people are not fast-forwarding through the commercials like everyone thought. In fact, many aren’t even time-shifting the shows; they’re watching them in real time – commercials and all.
According to the new research, two-thirds of the nearly 15 million DVR users watch the commercials. Even the skippers are watching 40 percent of the commercials they could skip. Why? They like commercials that grab their attention.
This is now starting to open up a new thinking from the undertakers who were trying to bury the undead body of TV advertising, because even the advertisers and agencies figured commercials were being FF’d.
For all of the YouTubing hype and podcasting proliferation, the Internet hasn’t stomped the old tube just yet. TV still holds a prominent place in our living rooms and lives. But things are changing in other ways, just like how radio didn’t die when TV came along, it just changed to something else and, with satellite radio, is still changing.
If DVRs haven’t killed TV commercials, what have they done to the 30-second chunks of capitalism? It’s made some trends we already knew about more critical. For instance, the first commercial in a pod and the last commercial are the two most-watched slots. That’s always been true. The middle commercials are in the worst slots. DVRs have made those two positions even stronger, because even the people who zap commercials usually don’t zap those two because they are hugging the show on both ends. Seems that those two spots should be selling at a premium, doesn’t it? But so far, they are not.
Many people say they only FF the commercials if the ads don’t interest them. So what if the first commercial in the pod sucks? Bad news for the others. A bad first commercial often gets the others zapped – death by association. In hard-core business sense, it means that if you don’t create a killer spot, you are wasting your money because if it is uninteresting, zap. The riskiest thing you can do is safe branding.
This is survival of the smartest branders. Knowing what we know, unless they start separately selling those two premium positions in the commercial pods (instead of just buying time on a particular show), the good spots will always get the lead and end positions. The junk will get tossed in the zappable middle. You’ll need to make creative commercials or risk getting trash time – and trash time costs the same as the good stuff right now. Something to think about.
Why does all of this matter, besides the fact that the death of TV commercials has been greatly exaggerated?
Glue.
A truly interesting commercial is the Glue that sticks you to the viewers. You may say, “Duh. That’s always been true.”
Hardly.
Watch commercials. There are still hundreds of millions of dollars worth of truly dull spots built around over-researched selling points or just plain old client fear. Interesting commercials are the only ones you need to spend money on. Maybe that sounds obvious. But having worked in advertising for decades, I can tell you it is not.
DVRs are growing toward the tipping point. They are now used mostly by more affluent people. But younger people are the ones adopting them quickly and, as they grow into adults, the thing will tip. Will you get zapped? Or Glued?
