DVR users: Cable TV working to make you watch commercials

Many Americans with a DVR now consider it a fundamental right to skip past TV commercials during their favorite show.

Ad for soda, skip. Ad for mortgages, skip. Ad for hair-preserving vitamins, skip, skip, skip. But don't think someone isn't watching from the other end and working hard to force you into watching those commercials, like it or not.

Cable TV companies and DVR makers now track behavior of TV watchers down to the second. And they are developing a sophisticated science for determining just which TV commercials people skip and which ones they watch.

For instance, TiVo recently released data that showed 84 percent of Grey's Anatomy viewers skipped ads during the May 7 episode - a potential loss of audience for advertisers. Desperate Housewives and American Idol saw similar evaporation once commercials started.

Viewers of the medical drama "House," by contrast, seemed to keep watching commercials.

Such data can have a direct impact on the fate of individual TV shows, especially if the science triggers advertisers like Procter & Gamble or Geico to shift their ad spot purchases from one show to another.

"No TV advertiser wants to hear anymore what the audience is for a program," said Todd Juenger, vice president and general manager of TiVo Audience Research & Management. "They care about how many people saw their specific commercial."

That means a lower-rated cable program may deliver more eyeballs during commercials than the most-watched network show, Juenger said.

Finding the exact moment during a show to place an ad is becoming vital for advertisers and TV companies. In that regard, some of the biggest shows on television may have the most to worry about when it comes to losing sponsors.

"As we see every month, there is little correlation between the top-rated programs and top-viewed commercials," Juenger said. The highest-rated program for total viewing in May through TiVo was Grey's Anatomy. But only one commercial during that show placed in the Top 10 most viewed commercials.

Five of the most-watched commercials ran during the break preceding the American Idol finale on May 20, which benefited the brands who bought that spot: Diet Coke, Nikon, Ford and the movie "Funny People."

It's not that Americans are watching less TV. They're watching more than ever. Nielsen's most current data show the average American watches approximately 153 hours of TV every month at home, a 1.2 percent increase from last year.

But given the growth of DVRs use, the worry among TV executives is that more and more people will only watch TV shows through playback, and thus fewer people will ever watch commercials.

People are working in the TV industry to deal with ad-skipping viewers.

Time Warner Cable and Bright House recently developed and launched a system called "Start Over" that offers some playback features similar to a DVR. The system lets viewers who tune in to a show midway during the program return to the beginning. The catch: The system won't let viewers skip past commercials during playback.

As the system develops, the companies plan to offer shows that aired days ago.

Meanwhile, cable and satellite TV companies are offering more interactive ads to keep hold of viewer eyeballs. These ads feature on-screen pop-ups that ask viewers questions, suggest an idea or offer them a perk for clicking on a button - which triggers a video on demand clip or other interactive system.

Targeting

If this science seems a tad intrusive on viewer privacy, there's more to come.

The next frontier of advertising on television is targeting specific TV commercials to specific types of viewers, sometimes down to the ZIP code or even to the individual viewer based on logs of their past behaviors.

For instance, if ratings data collected over time shows a particular household in an affluent zip code skips cosmetics commercials but not auto commercials, that viewer may be more valuable to Mercedes than Cover Girl.

Cable companies already collect some data like this, and several disclose in their privacy policies that they can record ratings data.

The industry practice now is to "anonymize" that data so names or addresses aren't disclosed.

But it's increasingly likely over time that two next-door neighbors may see different ads during the commercial break of the same show, one for a cruise line and the other for a foreclosure rescue company.