Nielsen: DVR Users Watch Two-Thirds of Television Ads

The belief that DVR users always fast-forward through TV commercials may actually be a myth.

People who own digital video recorders still watch two-thirds of the ads on television, according to new data released from the Nielsen Company, The New York Times reports. Part of the reason is that many people with DVRs tune in to watch about half of their television shows at the scheduled start time, which means they cannot fast-forward through commercials.

But surprisingly, Nielsen also found that even when watching the shows later, DVR owners watch 40 percent of commercials that could be skipped.

This differs from Nielsen data released last April, which showed that virtually no viewers caught time-shifted ads.
“People are buying DVRs not because they want to time-shift all of their viewing and skip all commercials, but because they want to time-shift some of their viewing,” Steve Sternberg, executive vp and director of audience analysis at Magna Global Media Research, is quoted as saying.

According to TiVo, viewers tend to watch the last commercial in a break the most, because they stop fast-forwarding early in order not to miss the next part of the show. The first commercial is watched the second-most often, as viewers sometimes don’t begin fast-forwarding right away.

TiVo serves 4.5 million of the roughly 15 million DVR viewers.