Most time-shifting TV viewers skip advertisements

Posted by Leah McBride Mensching on August 25, 2010 at 12:19 PM

Although television continues to be advertising's most memorable form, 86 percent of UK viewers using a digital video recorder to watch time-shifted shows skip through the ads, research published yesterday by YouGov for Deloitte has found. Shorter breaks in advertising would lead to more ad-watching, 48 percent of respondents said, MediaGuardian reported.

Meanwhile, digital and personal TV video recorders has led to more television watching, the report found. The research was conducted for the MediaGuardian Edinburgh international television festival, which begins Friday.

Image: Mahmoud.M's flickr photostream

"Online advertising's poor showing relative to television may surprise, given that the former has often been portrayed as television's nemesis," said James Bates, media partner at Deloitte, according to Biz Report. "What television does best - display and brand building - is what online struggles with. Online advertising is best at search, which previously newspapers, particularly for classified, had excelled at."

Television ads are also more effective than online, the poll of 4,000 adults found, with about 50 percent saying TV ads stay in their minds the most, the BBC reported.

Just 1 percent said online banner ads are memorable, and just 3 percent said online pre-roll video ads are hard to forget, Biz Report noted.