Another day, another news report about the death of advertising, brought about, we hear, by the emergence of digital video recorders (e.g. TiVo).
   Marketers quake at the frightening prospect of viewers deleting TV spots, the electronic equivalent of the do-not-call registry. 
   The TV spot, it is rumored, is soon to be confined to the marketing dustbin, to be replaced by product placements and other formats.
   Now, I confess, I’m the kind of viewer who laughs out loud at Sprint TV spots and taps my fingers when Target spots come on, although I’ve never been a customer of either company. So I’d always hypothesized that it’s pure marketing mania that keeps me hooked on watching ads. 
   In my imagination, “real people” with “real jobs” (you know, the ones that qualify for focus groups) sprint to the refrigerator during commercial breaks, leaving only media junkies and tired couch potatoes to watch ads. 
   So, while I was hardly quaking, I had to agree that on-demand viewing would soon make TV spots an endangered species.
   But now I think I’ve discovered a new angle. 
   I’ve become Hummer-conscious. Or, to be more precise, Hummer-advertising conscious. (For those readers who have been living abroad: Hummer is the military style car that has become hit among suburban drivers as a kind of Uber-SUV. One of its TV spots uses the well known Who hit “Happy Jack” and shows a young child building an unconventional model that ultimately becomes the Hummer.)
   It happened last week. 
   First thing, I overheard folks in the office next-door -- folks who did not work for a media company or an ad agency -- praising their favorite TV spots.
   “Subway’s the funniest,” laughed Michelle, a new mom, who went on to note that she “always loves when the Subway ad is on” but that she also “just loves the IBM ads.”
   “Nah” protested Ted, a 30-something accountant, “Hummer’s the best.”
   I was about to dismiss this when the next day I caught Ted, Michelle and a co-worker enthusiastically watching (and re-watching) the “Happy Jack” Hummer TV spot on the web. That’s right, the same dreaded 30 TV spot that viewers were supposed to zap, viewed voluntarily on a PC.
   Could it be? Real people who enjoy watching ads on their own time?
   “My son loves this ad,” Ted confessed, “he already wishes we had a Hummer.” And hearing the Who sing “Happy Jack,” Ted added with a grin, “I get chills when I hear this.” The ad’s now been downloaded to his PC. Hummer hasn’t just impressed Ted that it’s a cool brand, it’s won his 5-year old son over.
   Well, not every brand carries the emotional wallop of the Hummer – and of course not every campaign attains cult status. But the success of the Hummer campaign points to an obvious, frequently unmentioned, audience behavior: Viewers don’t just “put up” with ads, they appreciate them.
   Ted, upon being asked what he would do if he had a TiVo-like device, immediately declared that he’d “store” the “Happy Jack” Hummer ad so he could watch it at his convenience. Michelle agreed that having a few Subway and IBM ads would be fun to watch “whenever.”
   It’s common to think of TV spots as annoying interruptions that viewers just put up with in order to get what they “really” want, i.e., TV programming. That’s in fact the value proposition of pay cable like HBO -- “without commercial interruptions.” Right?
   But that’s an overly simple way of looking at watching TV.
   Yes, some audience members plan their viewing and watch shows “by appointment.” 
   But that’s hardly the rule. Most audience members watch TV on impulse, figuring that with the myriad of cable channels available they will find something to watch. 
   From the audience perspective, all that matters is finding TV that’s engaging and entertaining. Why should they care whether this engagement comes from programming or advertising?
   It’s not just media junkies like me who have noticed that spots like Hummer’s and Target’s and Sprint’s have humor, visual flair, and wonderful use of popular music. 
   Perhaps it’s a commentary on the quality of TV programming these days, but for many viewers ads are the highlights, not the low points, of TV viewing. (After watching reality TV, a few glitzy production values don’t hurt.)
   Of course, many viewers will choose to ignore even the most entertaining of Hummer spots -- they may hate SUVs or they may be Ford loyalists -- the list of reasons goes on. 
   It’s always been difficult for any commercial message to attract attention. That’s hardly news. And I’m the last person to argue that entertaining TV spots will create buyers or lead to specific purchase decisions. Advertising is just a piece of the marketing mix and always will be. That’s hardly news either.
   Surely, the real news is that many viewers do enjoy watching TV spots — and enjoy watching them enough to store them digitally. DVRs may shrink the total audiences for ads (and play havoc with TV metrics, but that’s another matter) -- but they can, aided by advertiser creativity, generate many new opportunities.
   Even as some viewers zap ads, others may use DVRs to play the same ad repeatedly. 
   Maybe Ted will create his own collection of favorite spots, and who knows what his soon-to-be web-savvy son will do?
   Perhaps file-sharing technologies may enable consumers to swap ads as well as music in the not so remote digital future. Ideas about “reach” may indeed shift if that happens.
   Storing ads? Watching them repeatedly? Sound like marketing fiction? 
   But the lesson of the Hummer’s campaign is that marketing fact is stranger than marketing fiction. There’s already a Hummer World web site for fans to watch Hummer’s TV spots on their own time. 
   It’s no stretch to imagine the same via digital TV. It seems fair to bet that TV spots will find their own place in the digital future. 
   Now that’s a lesson worth thinking about.