Nobody Watches Commercials in DVR Playback
October 17th, 2007 by Bill Gorman
In all the news about the new C+3 commercial ratings, it seems like most writers have focused on the “nothing new” theme. The NYTimes TV blog even ran with the title “People Do Watch Commercials“.
Not if they’re watching shows on their DVR they don’t.
The story that everybody seemed to overlook is that we finally have statistical proof that DVR viewers are completely lost to advertisers.
If we look at the numbers, for many shows, effectively no one who watches a show timeshifted watches the commercials.
Let’s use Grey’s Anatomy as an example, for the week of Sept. 24-30:
Live: 19.05 million
Live+SD: 20.09 million
Live+7: 22.97 million
3.9 million DVR viewers watched Grey’s Anatomy within 7 days after the live air.
Only 130,000 of them watched the commercials in DVR playback in the first 3 days after live air.
Sadly, We don’t have Live+3 viewer numbers to be able to do a direct apples to apples comparison, but if you guess that 1 million people watch the show between +3 and +7, then the % of DVR viewers that watch the commercials during playback is 130,000/2,900,000 or 4.5%
In my book, 4.5% is nobody.
As the penetration of DVRs grows [it's currently about 20%] and the public becomes more accustomed to using them, this is going to be a very big deal.
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