Internet TV Viewers Love The Ads So Much They Want Twice As Many

In the real world viewers will do anything to avoid watching advertising, but the online audience are happy to see even more. So says Comscore who told the Advertising Research Foundation's Annual Convention in New York that internet tv viewers are willing to wasee around twice as many ads than they currently do.


Tania Yuki, director of cross media and video products at comScore said:- "We are leaving money on the table (by not carrying a heavier ad load in online videos)," . She said that only 38% of the 2,000-some people surveyed said they watch online video to avoid ads, whilst around three quarters of viewers who watch TV shows on the web (71%) do so to catch up on episodes they missed and 67% said they watched online video because it was more convenient.

Which Ad do i want to watch today?
Yuki said Hulu generally runs around four minutes of advertising each hour and could easily increase it to seven minutes without impacting viewer tolerance. The news is great for Hulu, who are still to make any money off their online venture. Instead of turning into a subscription based model, just double the number of ads.


Other findings from the survey respondents showed that 71% watched traditional tv only, whilst 29% watched both on and offline tv.

If your a DVR, the future is looking bleak. According to a report by Nielsen, users are making use of catch up tv services instead of recording the show. The report released yesterday shows online tv viewing figures are up, but traditional tv viewing is not suffering as TV shows online compliment it.

Is DVR out of date?
Viewers are still watching as much traditional tv as ever, but are using their pc's to catch up on episodes that they missed on television and when there is no tv available. "Online video is used essentially like DVR and not typically a replacement for watching TV," says Nielsen's semi-annual Three Screen Report, which analyzes TV, internet and mobile video usage.


On the whole, internet video viewing numbers were up 16% during fourth quarter 2009 compared to 2008, and nearly half, 44% was craftily viewed in the working environment. Watching tv on the move soared during the survey period, up 57%, from 11.2 million users to 17.6 million, which Nielsen attributes to the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices.


Internet tv is not the only thing growing though. Media multi-tasking is on the rise as well. The report finds that more than half of respondents, 59%, use both tv and computers together, up 2.7% from last year. But it's the time that they use both together that saw the most growth: Up 34.5%, from two hours and 36 minutes last year to three hours and 30 minutes this year.


Nielsen's Matt O'Grady said:- "The initial fear was that internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalize traditional TV viewing, but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different."


What do we take from this report? Nothing much, viewers habits are changing slowly and the best use of current technology is to watch online when its convenient and necessary. Any company bosses may want to look a little closer to workers huddled over pc monitors though.