The increasing penetration of personal video recorders (PVRs) is causing growing concern for advertisers, with homes using the technology skipping through 77% of ad breaks during the 42% of shows that are recorded, according to new research due to be unveiled today at the Oxford Media Convention.
The new study, by media buying agency PHD, forecasts that there will be an 8.7% decline in commercial impacts by the end of 2010. The PHD report argues that the 8.7% decline in commercial impacts would be greater if it were not for the fact that in multi-channel homes there is a 31% increase in the viewing of digital commercial channels, compared with the five traditional analogue stations.
Other key findings from the research state that PVR enabled homes watch a fifth more television than those without.
Commenting on the research, Tess Alps, chairman of PHD said that she didn’t think the implications of the PVR revolution were as harmful to the TV advertising market as originally thought, as other media are facing similar challengers.
However, Ms Alps pointed out the dangers of PVRs to certain genres of programming that are comparatively expensive to produce, including comedy and drama. She said: “There is no way some of these things are going to be funded as they currently are.”
The research shows that while consumers are likely to watch sport, news and soaps live, the majority of them would record classic movies, comedy and drama serials, thus missing out on the adverts.
Research from Starcom (see PVRs Penetration To Reach 30% By 2010), issued in November last year, indicates that, by 2010, a third of the UK population will have access to PVRs, providing viewers with the capacity to easily skip adverts.
The Starcom report also pointed out that, while viewers with PVRs tend to watch more commercial television, 77% skip adverts, and by 2008 predict that advertisers will have lost 6% of commercial impacts.
A while paper recently published by media analyst Big Picture (see UK Ad Avoidance Costing Advertisers £30 Million Per Year) also points out the implications of the increasing popularity of PVRs, finding that the ability to skip commercials is losing 1% of commercial impacts, costing UK advertisers over £30 million.
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