Fact is, far fewer
see ads in DVR'd shows
MPG: Just 10 percent are seen by 18-49 viewers
By Diego Vasquez
Jan 8, 2010
For several years now, buyers and networks have been negotiating upfront buys on Nielsen's so-called C3 ratings, or average commercial minute rating including three-day digital video recorder playback. But those numbers may overestimate the percentage of ads that are time-shifted and watched by viewers, according to a new report from media agency MPG. The report says that the standard number cited by the industry is that 46 percent of broadcast commercials are watched “post-live” by viewers 18-49 via DVR or other time-shifting technology. But MPG finds that just 10 percent of commercials are watched post-live by that demographic. The rest are actually delivered live, based upon a comparison of commercial minutes only. The implication is that commercials viewed via DVR are going to be that much less effective. Don Seaman, vice president and director of communications analysis at MPG, talks to Media Life about how he came up with the study, what it means for media people, and why the CW actually has higher post-live commercial viewing than other networks.
What question did you most want to answer going into the study?
I was writing a report and I just had a throw-in line. I was making a point about “Heroes” and whatever its live rating was, but what was the live plus-7? Then I thought, how much is the commercial audience?
To me, C3 wasn’t really addressing that. It’s addressing commercial viewing, but not when the commercial is being watched. I’ve seen all the reports that say yes, people watch ads on DVRs, but no one was really making that apples-to-apples comparison.
What we did was look at commercial rating delivery and then live-plus-same-day, live-plus-three-day and live-plus-seven-day commercial viewing.
Granted, this is a very partisan perspective, I’m looking at it from the advertiser’s perspective.
What's the most interesting or surprising thing you found from this study?
That a lion’s share of commercial viewing is live. It’s not really a surprise, but it’s surprising that no one had noticed that. We never took the next step.
Looking at different programs, different days, different networks, etc., we saw a very consistent pattern, so that told me this is a behavioral thing. Intuitively it makes sense, but my biggest surprise was that no one had caught that before. And we did see it across a variety of different demos.
We looked at prime because it’s the most relevant in terms of DVR. We looked at prime average, network average, genre average, sub-genre average, and for the most part it's fairly consistent.
What's the most important thing media buyers and planners can take from it?
I had some discussions with our buying team and I think what this does is it tells you that people are watching the commercials. I don’t want to come away saying people aren’t, but when you’re looking at them you’re getting them live for the most part.
So that would help with program selection, timing of messaging. If you have a retail client that needs to drive a weekend sale, they’re really getting it day-of.
It also tells me that the content really is the key. It’s not great news for the :30s on a time-shifted basis, but maybe it’s time to look at other ways to reach consumers outside the traditional 30-second spot, if you’re looking to reach the aggregated audience.
But I’m not a buyer, so I’m guessing on that.
What are the biggest misperceptions about time-shifted commercial viewing, and why do they persist?
I think that as an industry we want to think the audience is sticking around for commercials, but as a viewer I know I blow through commercials like we all do.
It just gives you a sense of what the reality of it is--that time shifting is the reality. It’s something we have to accept and we can’t dig our heads in the sand and say people are watching them.
For the most part, people mentally tune out during commercials. They did so even in pre-DVR days.
One of our observations is that CW viewers, whose programs are heavily DVR’d, have a heavier time-shifted commercial viewing percentage.
What that indicates to me is that as younger kids they’re probably doing other things rather than fast forwarding. They're multi-tasking. People still avoid commercials in other ways than just fast forwarding.
How did your methodology differ from past studies, and why do you believe this is more effective?
What I basically did is I literally isolated the commercial minutes.
We literally took the commercial minutes for the live broadcast and the time shifted segment and isolated them.
The example I used in the report was if a tree falls on your house, it doesn’t matter the size of the tree, all you care about is the branches that hit your house. The program would be the tree, the commercial minutes are the branches that actually hit your target, which are your house.
That to me was the relevance we were missing. We were doing analysis of the program average, and that to me was ancillary.
Do you see a difference in commercial fast-forwarding in shows in terms of genre, target demographics or other variables?
There are some differences, but the pattern is fairly consistent. Things like sports and news, their time-shifted commercial viewing is minimal.
The things I’m calling socially pressing shows, things that people will be talking about tomorrow, they’re more likely to be watched live or same-day, so chances are they will deliver the highest amount of commercial ratings anyway.
But it also gets to a point where some shows and genres are less appointment viewing, and they might have a little higher delivery of commercial viewing post-live. We looked at maybe eight or 10 different demos, and it really did come out fairly consistent.
We tend to think of CW viewers as young and presumably tech-savvy. Why do you think CW viewers are less likely to fast-forward through commercials? Are they better targeted at the audience?
Multitasking, that’s my theory. They’re the ones who are using 200 texts a day, the kids that can’t text, they’re using their iPods, etc.—they’re probably using the commercials as downtime to pay attention to other stuff they want to do. Then they’ll hear when the show comes on and they’ll pay attention.
The other theory is those commercials are just better targeted, but I’d say it’s more multitasking.
Which shows or networks are most likely to have their commercials fast-forwarded through and why?
I’m looking at live-plus-three because that’s the basis of C3, and it was mostly NBC that didn’t really get much commercial viewing at all. CW did, and that’s in 18-49s.
For 35-plus, NBC is getting less than 5 percent of commercial viewing at three days, CW was at about 12 percent. In 25-54 at three days, NBC has the lowest delivery of commercials, Fox is second, and CW is highest. But part of it for CW is their numbers for the older demos are so small that the percentages are a bit inflated.
As for reasons, NBC is struggling and their programs aren’t necessarily water cooler programs. They have “Biggest Loser” and that’s about it. “Heroes” may aggregate the biggest audience, but it doesn’t really deliver commercial viewers.
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