Ad Industry Blind to DVR Threat

In the pivotal scene of the epic movie Spartacus, Kirk Douglas, playing the eponymous renegade hero who has led an uprising of his fellow slaves against their Roman masters, now faces defeat at the hands of the Roman army.

The Roman general announces that if Spartacus identifies himself, he will be crucified, but his fellow warriors will be spared. As Spartacus begins to step forward, a slave next to him announces 'I am Spartacus', then another and another, until the whole battlefield echoes with the cry. Spartacus surveys the tragic scene with a mixture of wonder and doom.

Everyone will be crucified.

I had my own Spartacus moment a few years ago, while addressing a big group of advertising executives. One claimed that consumers welcomed advertising and saw it as interesting and valuable. Surprised by this, I asked for a show of hands to see who else believed in this positive perception of advertising. Arms were slowly raised skyward until the whole lecture theatre was a forest of defiant raised fists.

Ad agencies have spent decades convincing themselves that the production of advertising is a positive, welcomed experience for customers. Until the advent of the Digital Video Recorder this was a harmless delusion. With the introduction of the DVR, however, this rose-tinted view could blind them to the apocalyptic changes looming.

Independent studies suggest that between 25% and 50% of television advertising is deliberately avoided by audiences. Once equipped with a DVR, this figure exceeds 90% of ads experienced while watching time-shifted programmes.

Remember, this does not even mean the viewer is in the room for, let alone watching, the remaining 10% of ads not zipped through. Only about half the TV watching in a DVR household is time shifted, but bear in mind that DVRs also enable you to skip ads in real time. Starcom estimates 17% of ads are avoided in this manner by DVR owners in the US.

Forrester Research found that advertising exposure in the average US household fell by more than 50% after the purchase of a DVR.

Now take into account BSkyB: a big company with a marketing budget to match and a strategy to install its new HDTV (high definition television) systems, all of which will come with a DVR as standard, in 10m British homes by 2010. Remember, too, that other companies, such as Sony and Phillips, are investing heavily in developing DVR systems.

According to the National Advertising Association, 75% of US advertisers expect to cut TV budgets in response to DVRs.

Big advertisers such as P&G, Ford and Heinz have embarked on experimental initiatives to take them beyond a reliance on traditional 30-second TV ads.

Let me end by offering some reassurance to those in advertising - WPP chairman Sir Martin Sorrell sees DVRs as 'an opportunity not a threat'. PHD estimates advertising impacts will drop by only 8.7% by 2010. Rupert Howell, chairman of McCann-Erickson UK, maintains 'the underlying principles haven't changed' and points out that 'TV never killed radio'. Charles Allen, chief executive of ITV, believes the threat from DVRs is 'not immediate' and ITV has a 'clear strategy for growth'.

I'm Spartacus. No I'm Spartacus...

30 SECONDS ON...DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDERS (DVRs)

- The two most notable DVR brands are Sky+ and TiVo. DVRs enable users to time-shift programmes from when they are broadcast to a more convenient time. They also allow viewers to pause live TV, as well as zip through programs and, crucially, advertising.

- The clearest evidence of the threat DVRs pose to advertising is the level of reassurance coming from Sky. Managing Director Dawn Airey defended Sky+ pointing out that it prevents viewers from deleting ads. She claimed Sky+ owners' ad recall was the same as other viewers.

- By 2010 there are expected to be between 8m and 10m households with a DVR.

- Mediamark Research (MRI) finds that 11.2 percent of U.S. adult households have DVRs, up from 8.6 in the fall of 2005 and 3 percent in 2004.

- An analysis by Simon Andrews of Big Picture, which works with brands on audience connection, claimed 74% of DVR users agreed it had 'enhanced their life'. He estimated that the increasing DVR penetration will result in millions of wasted ad spend.

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Comments

[Grant Rosenquist]

What Ad people -- especially media strategists like me -- fear most about DVR's is commercial avoidance, but that's a problem that's been around for years. The thing nobody talks about is/was the affect of the TV remote control on viewing. It only took about a nano-second for viewers to discover they could avoid ads by clicking to othe channels. Nielsen' people meter and local people meter panels can easily track second by second viewing patterns during commercial breaks and if you ever want to see a station or a network research director turn white ask for a presentation of those findings. One of the things we do know about DVR playback is that people tend to mimic live viewing when watching recordings. If they like to click around the dial they are likely to fast forward through breaks. If they stay through the breaks on live broadcasts the same holds true during time shifted. That behavior has been buried in the numbers for years now and yet, somehow, ads have worked (some better than others). The "decline" in the effectiveness of TV ads probably has more to do with the fact that an average TV household receives 117 viewing sources (Nielsen 2007), with each and every single one of those viewing sources (not including HBO, etc) full of ads. Simple math tells us that, unless the pie gets bigger, the slices get smaller and less filling. And if that isn't the worst mixed metaphor I've come up with in a while I'll eat my hat.