Brian Steinberg writes in the 07/16/07 issue of Advertising Age about which television spots are more prone to keep viewers from fast-forwarding. DRTV ads kicked butt.

The data comes from TiVo’s StopWatch, available since February of this year, which measures second-by-second viewership from a random sample of 20,000 TiVo units. Two months of data were released (April and May) and the results, while preliminary, are telling.

TiVo

It seems that commercials at what Steinberg calls “opposite ends of the spectrum” did well against the fast forward button. One is “bare-bones direct response” and the other is “high-production-value movie ads.” The data on movie ads are tenuous, in my opinion, given the small amount of those ads on the list of least fast-forwarded. On the direct response side, however, the data are more convincing.

In the month of May, for example, three of the top five least fast-forwarded spots were DRTV ads. I’ll spare you the somewhat-less-than-kind words Steinberg used to describe direct response ads.

Todd Juenger, from TiVo Audience Research, says that the information is still too new to draw strong, sustainable conclusions. In fact, you can’t even break down the data by demographics. Still directionally it’s suggestive. Mr. Juenger suggests that direct response ads do well “because they are easily understood.” He also points to the relevance of the message as an important consideration, although I struggle to link lack of message relevance to fast-forwarding when the sample is random.

Based on this, some agency media buyers expect agencies to offer more bare bones information in advertising, suggesting an approach closer to that of text-based online paid search ads.

It will be interesting to see what the future releases of the TiVo data show, but for now at least, my interest is piqued.