DVRs impacting TV upfronts

DVR TV viewing behavior is disrupting the television advertising market: Nielsen Media Research has been

measuring non-live digital video recorder viewing since last December, TiVo announced Monday an “upfront”, multi-million dollar advertising commitment from Interpublic Media’s Emerging Media Lab (TiVo offers interactive advertising during viewing pauses and a database of commercial information) and ABC sales executive Mike Shaw has labeled media agencies as “unfair” and “unjust” for using “live-only” Nielsen viewing data:

for the media agencies to come to the TV networks and tell us they want to give us zero credit for TV viewing via DVRs is not a tenable position. It is unreasonable, unfair and unjust. It is just not a responsible way to approach this issue, said ABC sales president Mike Shaw, as reported by mediaweek.com

According to the recent JupiterResearch report, “The DVR Dilemma Managing Consumer Behavior”, billions in advertising dollars are at stake:

53 percent of online Digital Video Recorder subscribers used their DVRs to skip commercials. If these DVR households skip commercials 100 percent of the time, the cable and broadcast TV advertising revenue potentially at risk in 2006 would be $8 billion of the $74 billion TV advertising market

Do you skip all the ads on your DVR? Join the conversation: “Talk Back” below to share your DVR strategies.