Ad avoiders” costing UK advertisers over £30 million
A new white paper produced by UK firm Big Picture estimates that UK advertisers are paying £30 million a year for ads that viewers never see.
The rapid growth of PVRs has enabled a substantial number of TV viewers to avoid TV commercials. The ease of zapping through ads in previously recorded programmes is a key issue, but more significant is that many users of PVRs actually change their viewing behaviour to avoid commercials in ‘live’ viewing. They become ad avoiders.
Simon Andrews, Founding Partner of Big Picture says “Ad avoiders are a real issue. Once people realise that the PVR captures live TV they choose to start viewing a few minutes into the programme. They rewind to the beginning of the programme and then fast forward through each ad break. By the end of the programme they’ve ‘caught up’ with the programme. In Sky+ households 45% of viewing is timeshifted, but homes with just a VCR watch next to no ‘timeshift’ or recorded programmes. We’ve seen this in our own research and both Starcom in the UK and Lyra in the US report similar findings.”
By reviewing all the key research both here and in the US, Big Picture estimates that advertisers are currently losing around 1% of commercial impacts. Given total UK adspend on commercial TV is over £3 billion that means over £30 million is being wasted right now. And with penetration of PVRs forecast to grow dramatically, this problem is only going to get worse.