Bones on Fox

Now, I realize that James Cameron is a big shot (there were two separate articles about him and the movie in the most recent issue of Wired magazine, for example), and that the movie is being released by Fox sibling 20th Century Fox, but really? It felt over the top to me. There were times where they could have stopped, having gotten their impressions and audience engagement, but instead they chose to go on and give us too much of a good thing.

Avatar Movie

Anyway, take a look at the show on the Fox website or on Hulu (it’s episode nine from season five, “The Gamer in the Grease”) and see what you think. Perhaps I’ve just lost it, but if it weren’t because I was able to fast-forward through the commercials, I would have watched more commercial messaging than program content. I’m all for product integration as a way to help pay for good content we get “for free” on television, but I’m also for restraint thereof.

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.

This time, the research study mentioned by author Brian Steinberg hails from IAG Research and found a few interesting tidbits of information. First and most concerning is that “people who use DVRs have one-third less general recall of commercials than people who watch the ads on live TV.” That’s right: one third. That’s in stark contrast to the finding by the NBC Universal TV Research folks that says that the drop in ad effectiveness in households with DVRs is slight. “Consider the source,” I said before.

According to estimates by Interpublic’s Magna Global, DVR subscribers will number almost 40 million (34% of US households) by the end of 2011. Further, the article notes that “already, a Nielsen study of the 2006-2007 TV season finds that ‘nearly all the viewing declines in live TV can be attributed to the increase in DVR use.’ And that’s with 97% of prime time viewing still occurring live.” That’s not an insignificant impact for a device that is currently in about 20 million homes.

As I’ve said before, it is incumbent on us to figure out how to get our consumers to engage with our message before it’s too late. The days of disrupting and interrupting the target to feed her our message are quickly coming to an end. Enter the days of getting consumers to seek out your message. That’s a paradigm shift that few are prepared to surmount. It’s about using other channels but also about using all channels (yes, even television) differently. Are we ready?

The research study’s second finding noted by the article is that contrary to conventional wisdom, the place for your TV spot to be is not the first position in the pod, but rather the last. Ad recall in DVR homes was found to be highest for those that run last in the commercial break. Why? I can tell you from personal experience. It’s easy to notice that a commercial break is starting (and thus you hit the fast forward button on your TiVo remote) but it’s difficult to figure out when it ends (especially when in fast forward mode). Since I don’t want to miss any part of the show I’m watching, I tend to stop early and catch the last spot in the pod.

Can last-in-pod positions exclusively be bought? At least in the general market, that’s a delicate situation. Networks have tended to parcel out first and last positions across clients to keep everyone happy and not rock any boats. What will happen when everyone starts clamoring for last positions? Perhaps we’ll end up with many more commercial breaks (kind of like the Oprah show) that are one minute long, offering only first and last positions to advertisers.

A third finding that may spark some controversy according to the author can be summarized as “creativity works.” As the article puts it, ads with more “‘creative’ flair tend to be better recalled by DVR viewers.” The author notes that this finding dovetails nicely with the network executives position that while they have to figure out a way to address these issues, advertisers have to do their part by improving their ads.

I also addressed this point in an earlier post on the DVR issue. We have to give consumers what they want, what they will seek. Great creative will find an audience or an audience will find it. It’s encouraging to hear that great creative is still very much a critical part of our craft. The bar continues to be raised, though, and it’s up to us to keep jumping over it time and time again.

You can read the article in full (heads up: subscription may be required).