Fast Forward Affects...Or does it?

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Technology is helping yet hindering the world of advertisement. Digital Video Recorders are great for people who are watching TV but not great for advertisement companies. I am going to look into the pro's and con's of DVRs in respect to the advertising market and also look at what the future potentially holds (or does not hold) for this type of technology.

DVRs allow people to record a show that they want to watch, and watch it at a time convenient to their schedule. This also allows people to fast-forward through commercial breaks. Even though my interest is in advertisement and I plan on working in the advertisement industry when I am done with school, I have to admit I really do enjoy fast forwarding through the commercials. The consequence is that companies are spending a lot of money for their 30 second time slot and now a lot of people are able to fast forward right past it. Erik Du Plessis the chairman of Millward Brown South Africa, a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School and the author of The Advertised Mind (Kogan Page, 2008) wrote in the article Digital Video Recorders and Inadvertent Advertising Exposure, "It has been argued that the 30-second TV advertisement is dead because owners of digital video recorders fast-forward through advertisements." However he also states later on in his article that, "it is not easy to fast-forward through a commercial. In fact, advertising avoidance requires paying close attention to the television screen-- an act that may result in inadvertently paying more attention to the message." The chart below compares the ability for a viewer to recall  a commercial when paying attention to it while being fast forwarded verses in real time. According to the chart watching a commercial being fast forwarded does not have as big of an effect that I would have guessed. 

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There are times when I find commercials to be beneficial. I often use commercials as my excuse to watch a show that I want with the plan of muting the TV during the commercials and working on my assignment.

I was not surprised to see that thoughts are already underway in figuring out how to make changes so people are unable to by pass all the advertisements. In an 2010 article from the Los Angeles Times, the networks are aware of the trend of people skipping the advertisements and "ultimately are looking to video-on-demand to replace the DVR. In other words, picture a day when instead of recording that episode of "Two and a Half Men" on your DVR, you order it on video-on-demand. The only difference would be that on VOD the ads would be there and you wouldn't be able to skip them."

I am not worried about the advertisement industry coming up with a new way to get around the ability to bypass advertisements. Next thing we know the technology that we are use to and using today will have changed greatly.