By 2010, a third of the UK population will have access to a PVR, providing viewers with the ability to skip commercials.
New research from Starcom states that there are 420,000 PVRs currently in use in the UK. This figure is predicted to increase to 5 million in the next four years, as penetration is set to reach 21% of the population by 2008. By 2012, this figure is forecast to increase to 34%.
While viewers with PVRs watch more commercial television (up 17%), 77% of them skip the ads. Even 17% of viewers watching ‘live’ TV with a PVR admit to skipping the ads, according to the media agency’s research which analysed habits of 500 PVR users. While the ability to skip ads appears not to have been a key driver for purchasing a PVR, given the opportunity, it seems viewers will do just that.
As a result, Starcom estimates that, by 2008, advertisers will have lost 6% of commerical impacts – that is the opportunity for an individual to see a 30-second ad. This is fuelling the use of programme sponsorship as a way of reaching the masses. The research claims that while viewers jump over the ads, they tend to stop at the sponsorship ‘bumper breaks’ such as Cadbury’s Coronation Street idents. Furthermore, while they object to the frequency of ads, the appear not to mind the frequency of these idents.
This research comes in the wake of Merrill Lynch’s recent report ‘PVR – Rise of The Machines’, predicting that PVR penetration in the UK is expected to reach 15.2% of homes in the next six years (see UK TV To Be Hit The Hardest By PVRs, Says Merrill Lynch).
Merrill Lynch says that, with so much at stake, it expects broadcasters to react and re-invent spot advertising in order to fight off the threat of PVRs, by increasing sponsorship, product placement, targeted ads and interactive commercials.
