It's been reported via a YouGov survey that 90% of people who own a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) skip the adverts they've recorded. The following suggestions were made to reverse this trend by those surveyed: shorter commercial breaks (48%), better advertising campaigns (32%) and shorter adverts (17%). Does this reflect your own opinion?
Do you even watch TV adverts? If you own a DVR, do you record programmes specifically to skip the ads later? If you don't own a DVR, do you leave the room when the adverts are on, or surf other channels for awhile? UK-specific, do you frequent the BBC channels more often because there are no adverts?
And if it's increasingly difficult to get viewers to watch adverts, should we be worried? Adverts pay for TV shows on commercial networks, so if advertisers know less people are watching their ads, what can they do to combat this? Will they start paying less for advert slots, thus reducing the income of networks, meaning there's less money around to spend on creating TV shows?
Will DVR manufacturers be pressured to disable the ability to fast-forward through adverts? It always struck me as bizarre how DVRs allow you to do that! Could broadcasters help by reducing the number of ad breaks, encouraging DVR-owning viewers to watch in real-time more often?
Also, isn't it a shame adverts are now so easily avoidable? Remember the days when it was believed adverts were better than the programmes they interrupted? Okay, I'd rather have better programmes than adverts, so I'm not too upset about that turnaround...
One final thought: people watch different things on TV, but a memorable/amusing advert can be seen by nearly everyone and is therefore better placed to make a pop-culture impact than TV is. That still happens today (remember Cadbury's drumming gorilla -- above?) but are iconic adverts doomed to being lost amidst a fast-forwarded streak on DVRs?
