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"Koeppel Direct's media buying expertise has played an integral role in making my company successful. Koeppel generated so much business for our company, occasionally we have to limit their media buys, in order to handle all of the new business." | |
| - R. Gregg Marketer of Senior Products |
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MEDIA BUYING DIRECT RESPONSE TELEVISION (DRTV) ARTICLE ...... |
TV Viewing Trends in the Age of TiVo
By: Peter Koeppel
Published: 07/06 - ERA |
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There's been a great deal of speculation regarding the effect of TiVo on TV viewing.
I recently came across a ranking of the shows that have the highest percentage of their audience watching on DVR's.
Among the top 40 programs on TV, the Fox show "24" has the highest percentage of viewers that "TiVo" the show
according to a May 17 article in the New York Times. A total of 4.8% of the show's viewers or 606,000 are DVR
viewers according to Nielsen. American Idol has the highest number of DVR viewers with 821,000, but the percentage
of people that TiVo the show is only 2.8%, which makes sense since most viewers of this type of programming want
to find out the winner right away, rather than waiting to view it later on their DVR device.
TiVo Usage is Highest Among Viewers of Primetime Network Programming
The percentage of viewers that "TiVo" top rated shows still seems low at this point, but those percentages should
grow, since "by 2008 more than one in four households will own a DVR, up from one in eight now," according to
Forrester Research (NY Times).
After reviewing the NY Times list of the shows with the most viewers that did not watch the shows live, I was
struck by the fact that all of the programs aired during primetime on the major broadcast networks. Primetime
network broadcast shows are not where most DRTV advertisers typically run their ads, since these shows are
too expensive to pay out for a direct response advertiser. Most of the DRTV advertising occurs in cable,
satellite or syndicated programming and not during primetime. So this is good news for DRTV marketers.
How DVR's Are Affecting the Way Media is Bought
Since Nielsen is now measuring DVR viewing patterns, at the "upfront" market this year, for the first time, the
major brand advertisers and their agencies are saying that they are not going to pay for people who don't end up
viewing a particular show. If the advertisers and their agencies take a firm stand on this, it could end up
reducing media rates, which could trickle down to DR marketers. On the other hand, if more general advertisers
wait until the "scatter" market to purchase media, it could impact DR inventory for certain types of
programming, such as syndication. Typically if more general advertisers buy syndicated programming in the "scatter"
market, DR advertisers end up losing their inventory to the general advertisers, because it was purchased at a
lower rate.
There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
The current economic model that TV is operating under, where you can avoid commercials and watch a show for free
is not sustainable. "Television these days seems to be about where the Internet was five years ago. People are
getting an amazing variety of entertainment essentially free," according to David Leonhardt in his the NY Times
article. Websites couldn't sustain this model, so now many charge you for full access to their sites. At some
point in the future, if you want to watch TV and avoid commercials, it's inevitable that you are going to have to
pay for it or perhaps technology will intervene and commercials that can't be TiVo'ed will be created.
Click Here to view the entire article
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