Over the past few years the use of DVRs has increased and has subsequently changes how viewers watch their television. There has been a surge in watching television shows days after its release date compared to watching television shows live. For example, Fox’s new television series “Sleepy Hollow” attracted a rating of 3.4 among adults aged 18 to 49 one day after its premiere. But after adding digital video recorder playback a week after the premiere, the overall rating became 5.8.
This delayed viewing has had a great impact on ratings for networks such as Fox and CBS but advertisers are not paying networks for the viewers that watch the shows later. Therefore networks are not being compensated for ads viewed past one week of the episode’s airdate. To solve this problem, networks such as Fox has video-on-demand, VOD, which plays episodes with fast-forward disabled so viewers must watch advertisements. Networks prefer customers to view shows this way so that they can be compensated for advertisements but this method is used less than DVR.
To encourage viewers to watch shows through VOD, Fox and CBS are running ads to promote using VOD to customers but this will strategy work? Or should Networks encourage advertisers to make more thought provoking and engaging ads so viewer do not skip ads when watching on DVR?
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