Commentary

Consumers want fewer digital ads: But that's good news

by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 19, 2011

Seventy percent of people say the biggest reason for watching a TV show online is to watch a missed episode.

The next reason -- 57% of Internet customers -- is because of convenience. In third place -- 56% of digital viewers -- want to see a past episode. But revealing is the fourth reason.

Dan Piech, senior product management analyst of comScore, says -- 42% of people -- say it's because there are less ads versus on traditional TV.

He says the data shows consumers now want fewer digital ads versus a year ago. In 2010, comScore says consumers limitations were around five and half minutes to six minutes per episode of a TV show. The year before consumers would allow around six to seven minutes of messaging.

Good news for premium TV digital sellers, says Piech, is the business still delivers on average less than 5 minutes per episode.

1 comment about "Consumers want fewer digital ads: But that's good news".

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Doug Garnett from Protonik, LLC, January 19, 2011 at 7:40 p.m.
Interesting, Wayne. Of course, MediaPost also showed recent research that consumers really don't want to pay for advertising free content. We'll have to see how it comes out.
But more fundamentally, these stats strike me by suggesting that online viewing probably isn't acting in a large way yet to replace TV viewing. Rather, it augments it - it gives consumers a place to watch some TV during time they wouldn't ordinarily watch TV.
The 42% number enjoying fewer ads is interesting, too. Per the ARF, 33% have always mentally ignored all ads on live TV. So, this 42% looks like those people (assuming that population is quite over-represented in the current online viewers which is a reasonable assumption).
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