Youngsters Skip DVR Ads Less Than Seniors 460
Dekortage writes "Analyzing DVR viewing research, Ad Age has noted something unexpected: older DVR users are more likely to skip ads than younger DVR users. The skew is particularly apparent among men: 50% of seniors skipping all the ads, but only 20% of teens do so. Women of any age group tend to be around 35%. Ad Age hypothesizes that younger viewers 'just pay attention to other media when the ads are on TV or, worse yet, perhaps the TV is just 'background music'... I always thought that ad skipping was a major benefit of DVRs. Do you skip all the ads?"
what is this television? (Score:3, Insightful)
well
Ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
I skip ads the right way... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just really hate that everything in our society has to be about selling you something, or pushing something else into your view.
Television? (Score:3, Insightful)
Buyers vs non-buyers (Score:5, Insightful)
Their teenage children may not feel as strongly about adverts because children of DVR buyers, unlike DVR buyers themselves, have not self-selected for wanting to skip ads.
Jusy my $0.02.
Damn right I skip all the ads! (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, here in the UK, they seem to have started 'turning the volume up' on adverts to really grab your attention. That, the way they treat you as mindless consumers and the whole bullshit science of 'health food' and 'beauty' products make me really appreciate my DVR.
Scene releases = No ads (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the research differentiate (Score:5, Insightful)
Just based on personal observation, I notice most young people don't skip ads, but rather start watching another program. Their hyper short-term attention spans drive them to find new content instead of finishing the content they were originally watching. A teen will watch 10 minutes of 5 different shows in an hour, without having to use the skip button on the dvr at all.
Older people, with greater attention spans, want to continue the program they were watching, and thus use the technology to skip the ads in order to watch the entire program.
Re:Buyers vs non-buyers (Score:4, Insightful)
Younger people are more into popular culture, which is heavily marketed on tele. They have more of a propensity to stay in touch. "Older people" are going to be far more "set" in their way and less influenced by ads.
Hence, as the parent suggests, their desire to purchase a DVR
Re:Brand Loyalty (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How would they know? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever notice how they're always rather insistent that you plug the dvr into a phone or ethernet? Dish charges $5/mo per dvr that isn't plugged in.
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:5, Insightful)
To that end, why are there so many ads? Well, ads simply *work*. If they didn't, there would be no marketing departments and no billboards, no jingles on the radio, no Super Bowl extravaganza commericials.
I also think ad dollars (and the inevitable ads they pay for) save the average American a lot of money each year. How, you might say? Ad sales finance ventures that may otherwise be unprofitable or unsustainable. When Google became more than just the new kid on the block, and needed to finance a "real" business, they turned to ad sales for revenue. Broadcast TV is free to the public only because advertisers pay for airtime. I cannot imagine a scenario where ABC/NBC/CBS could stay in business broadcasting for free, without the life support of ad sales. Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. Even if 13 minutes of every half hour program is advertising, I get to watch an episode of [your favorite show] for free, courtesy of Tide or Tampax or Ford or whichever ad was on while I was digging in the fridge for some mustard on my sandwich. Unfortunately, those broadcasters (and most cable networks) are now addicted to this revenue and try to find more new places to sell ad space, like in-show interstitials.
Does some advertising go to far? Certainly. There's no need for annoying interstitials during a show, especially when it covers up an important part of the action. Do ad dollars shape the world we see today? Of course. Some of our most American retreats are named for advertising. Wrigley Field for example...possibly the first stadium named for an advertiser. It's a historic name now, but we're all weary of Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T Wireless/Minute Maid Park and the Nokia Sugar Bowl. (That said, I would have hated to see Candlestick Park in San Francisco fade away into the shadows over something simple like the naming rights...my all time favorite ballpark, and I'm not even from California)
Ads can be annoying and overdone, but they are a product of a free capitalistic society. Considering the available societal alternatives (China, Myanmar, and Cuba come to mind), I'll take a few ads and nearly constant product placement. Besides, I didn't buy a Tivo for nothing!
Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Then it went to commercials between the half hour shows, with one commercial halfway through at 15 minutes. An hour show would have the commercials between, and then every 20 minutes.
Then it went from two commercials between shows, and then one ever 15 minutes.
Then two every 15 minutes.
Then two every 10 minutes.
When I finally could not take anymore, and just quit watching TV altogether about 5 years ago, it was 3-4 commercials every 4-5 minutes. I tried recording a 30 minute show-pausing during the commercials, and ended up with 18 minutes of show...the other 12 minutes were commercials...over one third of the 30 minute show was commercials, not the show.
And those insidious 'infomercials'- 30 minute commercials WITH commercials...WTF?!?!?!
Enough already!
So yeah, I enjoyed being able to watch a show with only one or two SHORT commercial breaks, but I cannot enjoy the way it is now where the commercial breaks seem to be longer than the show breaks in between them.
To me it seems to have done a complete 180. It started as a way for advertisers to use a show to get a chance to show an ad or two and provide the entertainment draw to increase the audience to view those couple of ads.
Now the show is only an vehicle to drown you in commercials, the show be damned.
So now, with a DVR (with say a 200GB HDD), you're filling up over 70GB's of it with commercials, and during playback, you end up having to either hold on to the remote, or pick it up every 4 minutes to fast forward through the commercials.
No wonder most kids today have short attention spans, or just do something else and leave the TV playing in the background.
This sounds like a study done back in the early 1990's (given an $86,000 USD grant) to find out if people preferred warm or cold showers, and why. Duh!
It's simple... (Score:3, Insightful)
moral of the story (Score:3, Insightful)
As a young person... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most often I am watching tv live, and I can only fast forward through something that has either already been aired and recorded, or is ondemand. Fortunately, the DVR will record two channels at once; either the one or two channels I specify, or the last channel I was at and the current channel I am at. This lets me watch two channels back and forth.
Sometimes I have the tv on as background, or am only somewhat paying attention to it. The second most common reason for not skipping, for me(aside from watching live), is that I simply forget that I can fast forward! I frequently wake up from some kind of mindless daze in the middle of a commercial and realize... "oh, WTF am I doing?!", then start fast forwarding. This can even happen more than once or twice in the very same program.
I'm not young anymore! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the seniors realize they haven't got much time left to watch ads? [ducking]
Re:Ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you pick a user name, think about the future. (Score:5, Insightful)
On topic: I notice that almost every ad I see contains something dishonest or adversarial.
TV ads are a good source of information for me. They tell me what not to buy. If it's on TV, it's over-priced or unnecessary, with few exceptions. Otherwise the advertiser would not be able to pay, or be willing to pay, the huge cost of TV ads.
Re:Ads? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:1, Insightful)
For instance, in the US the big pharmaceutical companies spend a lot more on advertising than they do on R&D, but ultimately the ads are paid for along with the prescription (or the insurance that allows one to afford the prescription).
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:1, Insightful)
The advertising system *works*, but not in the way that it succesfully directs consumerism: it's a large market in and of itself, and I'd posit that it's become a self-sustaining ecology rather than a result-oriented practice. I see advertising as a self-fulfilling prophecy: it exists only because businesses believe it works, and continues to exist because consumers believe that the product with the most expensive advertising campaign must therefore be the best.
Of course, that's not to say that new products shouldn't be brought to the attention of its intended target market (aka product positioning). But advertising is way past (below) that level of sophistication.
disclaimer: yes I'm biased. I actually switched to another telecom provider because my current one managed to start a truly obnoxious advertising campaign (KPN Hi).
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then such ventures should fail. I have no problem with that.
Advertising makes products that I do want cost more, simple as that. Without spending money trying to convince people who don't want a product that they need it anyway, companies would have a lower overhead and thus could sell for less. Of course, they would sell less overall, and only companies with legitimately useful products would thrive (with the occasional freak exception, of course), but I don't view either of those as necessarily a "bad" thing.
Look at our society, look at the current economic crisis, look at Bratz dolls, and tell me we don't have an outright disease of buying crap we don't need. We have a problem, and we can thank advertising for hefty chunk of that.
Ads can be annoying and overdone, but they are a product of a free capitalistic society.
Just as you can have dinner without gorging yourself to the point of bursting; Just as you can drink without passing out drunk; You can have capitalism without encouraging people to spend more than they have on crap they don't need.
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:1, Insightful)
Ooh, nice bit of product placement there! :-)
Re:When your time is running out... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you've hit the nail on the head there.
The problem isn't that people are buying things, it's that they're buying things that are truly unneccesary, and in some cases actually harmful.
Taking the example of Bratz dolls, if I had children, I wouldn't even consider buying them. As far as I can see, they're teaching children that being succesful is the same as being famous. For any reason, no matter how degrading.
It appears that society agrees though. The person named as the most popular role model in the UK for teenage girls recently was Amy Winehouse. Which leads me to think I should probably leave the country, before another generation of kids grow up who believe they're entitled to fame just because they exist, instead of having to work for it. After all, if Amy can do it just by getting wasted in front of cameras now and again, why shouldn't they?
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:4, Insightful)
I almost believed you weren't a shill for some advertising or marketing agency until I read that hilarious line. "If we didn't have ads plastered everywhere, we'd have COMMUNISM!!!1!"
Ads are not so much a product of a free capitalist society as they are a symptom of a culture that values money over things like time, aesthetics, and integrity.
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. Just wow.
And I suppose that you never had anything like Ninja Turtle toys growing up ? I remember when they first became popular that parents everywhere were worried that the only thing TMNT taught children was how to be violent. Same reason toy guns were banned at my grade school in the 80's.
If you didn't have any Ninja Turtle action figures I'm sure there's lots of other examples of toys from previous generations that you grew up on and are no worse off for it.
The way you and the parent are talking is like people are sheep and the advertisers are pulling puppet strings and forcing them to spend their money on unnecessary crap at the expense of society. You're not giving people enough credit and it's actually a little insulting.
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Advertising is one of the most important tools of modern business. If you deny businesses the right to advertise, we'll have far worse problems than those catchy jingles.
Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless there is perfect competition, the overhead a company has is only marginally related to the selling price.
If I can sell a widget for $100, that's what I'll ask for it, regardless of cost. If the market is buying my widgets as quickly as I can produce them, I would be stupid to reduce the price, even as efficiencies reduce costs to produce.
It's the same incorrect argument that people make that "shoplifting costs everyone more money". No, it doesn't. Shoplifting costs the store owner money, and is morally wrong. But the shop owner can't raise prices because the store next door (who has a more efficient loss prevention program) will undercut their prices.
Re:Do you skip all the ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't 100% reliable though, so I noticed that they will often skip back 5 seconds to see if it skipped forward too far
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, kind of. More often than not this kind of advertising tries to sell stuff that's about as superfluous as a fifth wheel mounted on the roof of your car. My basement is full of junk that I bought when I still believed in this kind of ad. Maybe it's because an engineer - if there's something that will make my life easier, I'm quite likely to think of it first and then go looking whether there's an appropriate product on the market (which is usually the case
Then there's the issue of ads for the purpose of adding choice. Sure, you may think that McDonalds is the best restaurant ever, but you don't want to go there all the time. See an ad for a new place, then you try it out.
That's a good point. However, the level of "intensity" to make your business known is very low. For me, even a mention in the yellow pages will do. You're running a restaurant that serves the type of food I'm interested in ? I'm probably going to find out by looking in the phone book.
Then there's the only kind of blanket advertising that actually has a chance to sway things for me - when it doesn't matter one whit.
Yep
Of course, commercials that insult my intelligence by making me think that their as-good-as-everything-else products are in some way actually better without presenting any facts have the opposite effect, and make me less likely to buy.
And here's the scary thing: Even ads that blatantly insult the intelligence of the viewer work. That shows that most people don't realize just how stupid these ads are.
Re:I skip ads the right way... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Digital Video Recorder (Score:3, Insightful)
A PVR yields you commercial free television without having to BROADCAST YOURSELF TO THE MAN.
A bittorrent download while achieving possibly a technically better result comes with a big fat "SUE ME" sign.
It's amazing that this doesn't occur to anyone even after all of the thousands of RIAA lawsuits.
Why waste network bandwidth when you can get multiple 24/7 9GB/hr video feeds?
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:what is this television? (Score:4, Insightful)