Emmy Gold Not Necessarily a Silver Bullet for Advertisers : TiVo
Alviso, Calif : TiVo Inc. , the creator of and a leader in television services and advertising solutions for digital video recorders (DVRs), has announced that all that glitters may not necessarily be advertising gold. Using its Stop||Watch ratings service, TiVo unveiled audience viewing data depicting heavy levels of season-long timeshifted viewing and among the lowest levels of commercial retention for nearly all of the 2009 Emmy Award winning programs compared with other nominated shows within their respective genres.
For example, AMC’s Mad Men saw 83% of its timeshifted audience fast-forward through its commercials, compared to a genre benchmark of 73%. Comedy Central’s South Park similarly showed fast-forwarding of 66% compared to genre average of 55%.
NBC’s 30 Rock and sitcoms in general were the exception with only 64% fast-forwarding compared to a genre average of 66%.
“This data clearly demonstrates that while critics and general audiences may love a program, that doesn’t mean they’ll watch the commercials,” said Todd Juenger, Vice President & General Manager, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement. “In fact, the most beloved programs are often subject to the highest degree of timeshifting and commercial avoidance.”
The Stop||Watch ratings service, introduced in February 2007, is offered via an easily sortable database of ratings for nationally run programs and advertisements from cable and broadcast networks, with data going back to September 2006. The service now tracks ratings for 112 networks from 5:00am – 11:30pm.
TiVo’s Power||Watch ratings service provides advertisers access to second-by-second program and commercial ratings data, with demographic segmentations, for 20,000 households who have volunteered to take part in a “passive” consumer panel. The Power||Watch(TM) ratings service provides subscribers the ability to look at TV viewing broken down by standard household demographics including income, geography, ethnicity, number of children and tenure of TiVo subscriber, among others. TiVo can associate household data with the viewership data then produce program and commercial viewership reports by aggregate demographic and behavioral audience groups. All reports prepared by TiVo using this data are anonymous.
TiVo Stop||Watch ratings service data is derived from a daily, aggregate, anonymous, stratified random sample of 250,000 TiVo subscribers – from which the second-by-second “clickstream” of behavior and viewership is collected and assessed.