Commercial impacts rise to a record high as TV viewing continues to grow

The latest TV viewing figures show that people in the UK watched an average of 27 hours, 34 minutes of live, linear TV each a week during January to September 2010 (3 hours, 56 minutes a day), with growth across every age group.

This represents an increase of 1 hour, 50 minutes on the same period last year, according to Thinkbox.

Commercial TV continued to perform strongly, accounting for 62% of TV viewing during the period – with the average UK viewer watching 17 hours, 5 minutes of linear, commercial TV channels a week (2 hours, 26 minutes a day). This is an increase of 49 minutes a week on the same period last year and of 1 hour, 22 minutes on the five year average viewing time for the period.

Reasons behind the continued growth include:

• Greater choice of TV to watch as more households switch to digital TV (93%, according to Ofcom)
• An updated TV measurement system, launched in January, which more accurately captures viewing of second TV sets and on-demand TV
• New TV technologies (such as digital TV recorders) that enhance the TV experience and magnetise viewers to TV sets
• On-demand TV services which send people back to the broadcast schedules. 89% of people watch on-demand TV mainly to catch- or keep-up with missed broadcast TV ( Decipher/Thinkbox)
• The economic recession encouraging people to stay in more

The increase in commercial viewing has provided a boost to TV advertising. Commercial impacts (the number of ads watched at normal speed) during January to September were up 5% on the same period last year, and have grown by 21.3% over the last five years to a new record high. The average viewer watched 44 ads a day during January to September compared to 43 ads on the same period last year.

Over £2.8 billion was spent on TV advertising during January to September 2010, according to Nielsen. This is up 19.2% on the same period last year. (Nielsen’s figures do not include investment in TV sponsorship, advertiser funded programmes, interactive services or online TV.)

According to BARB, non-live, ‘time-shifted’ viewing accounted for 6.8% of the UK’s TV consumption during the period. In households that own digital television recorders, such as Sky+ or Freeview+, timeshifting represented a slightly larger proportion of TV viewing (13.3%).

Tess Alps, Thinkbox’s chief executive: “It is increasingly obvious that viewers want to watch TV live and as it happens; they turn to on-demand services primarily to catch-up with something they’ve missed. These new figures reiterate the enormous appeal of linear TV in the UK as new ways to watch TV grow. This enduring popularity stems from a basic human desire to share experiences and it shows no sign of diminishing.”