• by Joe Abruzzo , June 27, 2013

It’s definitely becoming harder to reach target customers on television. Beyond the number of channels and choice of platforms, with DVRs and VOD, viewers are deciding which episode of their favorite program to watch.  They can catch up on episodes of series, and spend entire evening bingeing on their favorite shows.

With VOD, networks are providing an increasing number of opportunities for viewers to binge-view back-to-back episodes of “The Big Bang Theory” on TBS, back-to-back episodes of “Burn Notice” on USA, back-to-back episodes of “Chopped” on the Food Network, and others.

Viewers are also creating their own versions of binge-viewing: watching recorded episodes on their DVRs (but fast-forwarding past outdated advertising).

As the growth in DVR penetration slows, viewers are discovering free VOD episodes of their favorite programs. Comcast is taking interesting steps to adapt to this new VOD viewing behavior.  In the near future, working with Nielsen, it will be introducing On-Demand C3,  making the full current season of prime-time episodes available on VOD for participating networks.  Every episode of the program will carry the same C3 commercial load  -- the commercials that aired with this week’s episode.  Fast-forwarding will be disabled.  The benefit will be many more opportunities for an advertiser’s commercials to be seen.

Nielsen will credit the commercial exposure within its C3 ratings and will begin to separately report ratings for the On-Demand C3 ratings component.  (Nielsen still considers this a trial, but feels confident of delivering On-Demand C3 ratings.)

As long as the currency remains at C3, days four through seven will be made available to advertisers through dynamic ad insertion.  At the point that the currency moves to C7, Comcast and Nielsen will extend On-Demand C3 to cover the entire 7-day crediting period.