The New York Times has good news for TV executives reliant upon ever-diminishing ad revenues.
According to new data released yesterday by the Nielsen Company, people who own digital video recorders, or DVRs, still watch, on average, two-thirds of the ads.
One big reason is that many people with DVRs still tune in to watch about half of their shows at the scheduled start time, meaning they must sit through commercials.
And even when people watch recorded shows later, many are not fast-forwarding through the ads. On average, Nielsen found, DVR owners watch 40 percent of commercials that they could skip over — perhaps because they like ads, don’t mind them or simply can’t be bothered.
Nielsen claims that commercials have a freshness date (like milk), for they are more often watched during playback when the viewer is looking at the show the same day it ran.