Live TV viewing has significant advantages over DVR playback when it comes to commercial exposure and brand message recall. TV shows with a high percentage of live viewing are therefore substantially more valuable to advertisers than those viewed largely via DVRs. A logical extension of this is that commercials on streaming platforms are significantly more valuable than those on linear television.
For advertisers, streaming has all the advantages of both live and DVR viewing with virtually none of the major drawbacks. As with DVRs, streaming is appointment viewing (which means the TV is not on as background noise, there is less multitasking, and viewers are more attentive). But like live viewing, there is no fast-forwarding through commercials. And unlike linear TV, there is no channel switching (or pausing) during commercials – when ads come on, if you don’t leave the room, you’re exposed to them.
The (Research) Times They Are A Changin’
There was a time when extensive research studies were done by broadcast and cable networks that focused on their strengths while highlighting the weaknesses of their competitors.
Who remembers CBS’s The Cable Fable? That was 35 years ago, in a much simpler media landscape. The average home had fewer than 30 channels, and while two-thirds of homes had a VCR, time-shifting was not yet a major thing and DVRs were still more than a decade away. Most broadcast and cable networks were not corporate siblings, so each had the freedom to treat the other platform as the enemy.
The standard broadcast line (which for years was true) was that bigger is better, and nothing on cable provided the reach of the Big Four broadcast networks. The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau (CAB) tried to counter that narrative with numerous studies showing that cable programming is just as valuable to advertisers as the broadcast networks (remember, at the time ad-supported cable networks did not air original scripted series and were not thought of as being in the same league as the broadcast networks in terms of quality programming).
The main goal on the cable front was to get advertisers to shift more and more money each year from broadcast to cable. The broadcast networks, faced with eroding audiences for the first time, tried to minimize their losses. Ad-supported cable made gradual inroads each season, which accelerated during the early 2000s as more cable networks started airing high-quality original scripted programming.
The broadcast networks were hampered by the fact that in addition to cable, they also continued to treat one another as the enemy – as they had since the beginning of television. Since they essentially owned the airwaves for so long, they couldn’t comprehend needing to ally themselves with those they still considered their main competitors to fend off the upstart and much smaller cable networks.
Cable networks, on the other hand, quickly understood that while they did compete with one another, they were also allies against the bigger broadcast networks – if advertising dollars shifted from broadcast to cable, they all benefited. Cable networks started to grow and siphon off broadcast viewers in no small part because they began cross-promoting each other’s programming – something the broadcast networks still stubbornly refuse to do. While no individual cable network was able to even come close to reaching a broadcast network’s audience size, cable as an entity eventually did.
There was a time when it was a broadcast world (1960s-1970s), which was followed by a time when it was a broadcast versus cable world (1980s-2000s). It became more of a streaming world (or streaming-war world) in late 2019-2020 when Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max (now Max), and Peacock, joined Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, and CBS All Access (now Paramount+) in spending huge amounts of money on original content. Broadcast and cable are now lumped together under the linear TV label (by the media and ad industries, if not consumers).
Those different times, or media eras if you will, have impacted how much and what kind of research has been done on the effectiveness of television advertising.
Shifting Alliances: Why TV Research is Not What it Used to Be
When broadcast and cable networks became siblings under the same corporate umbrella, it started to affect the type of research these companies were willing to underwrite. The days of The Cable Fable and the CAB are long over. The CAB is now the VAB (Video Advertising Bureau), with membership including broadcast and cable networks.
Not only do giant media conglomerates now own broadcast and cable outlets, they all now have their own streaming platforms as well.
The upfront sales pitch is no longer “Broadcast is bigger and better, and the only place to reach your customers all in one place” or “Our cable network has the most engaged audiences and is the only one that can effectively compete with the broadcast networks.” In essence, they are all telling us that they – Disney (ABC, ESPN, Hulu, Disney+…), Paramount Global (CBS, Paramount+, TV Networks, Showtime…), Warner Bros. Discovery (Turner cable networks, HBO, Max...), Comcast (NBCUniversal, USa, Syfy, Bravo, Peacock...) – are basically all the same: self-contained, massive communication hubs and unrivaled unified companies, armed with multiple networks, platforms, and genres, that can reach everyone, everywhere, all at once.
As a result, there is seldom any good research that highlights the weaknesses of any part of these entities (which also results in little research showing the strengths of other parts). Advertisers (remember them?) are often left with meaningless studies proclaiming “advertising works,” along with assurances that if they just add this, optimize that, or use this new and improved planning or buying tool, everything will be better.
C3 and the Move Away From Vetting Research Methodology
This is the main reason we haven’t seen much research into the differences of commercial effectiveness in live viewing versus DVR playback – which was one of the biggest issues in the advertising industry beginning around 2005. When I was head of audience analysis at Interpublic’s MAGNA Global, we conducted three years of groundbreaking Commercial Pod Studies (2005-07), which were instrumental in leading to the industry shifting from program ratings to C3 in Q4 2007.
There was a time when any changes to audience measurement needed to undergo extensive vetting before the industry would consider implementing them. People meters, for example, were evaluated by industry committees for nearly three years – including a full year of side-by-side data to compare it with the old meter/diary methodology – before agencies and networks decided to use it as marketplace currency.
Before switching from average program ratings to C3, however, virtually no research was done into the methodology for measuring average commercial minutes. This was the first time that marketplace business concerns overrode the necessity for validating research methodology. It is also the moment that Nielsen shifted away from being a pure research company – at the following year’s national client meeting, Nielsen actually proclaimed that getting a product to market was now more important than validating the research beforehand.
Precious little research has been done in this area since then. The main reason? Documenting the commercial recall advantage of live viewing over DVR viewing benefits virtually no one (other than advertisers). Most of the networks that have the highest percentage of live viewers (cable news, sports networks, and cable networks with heavy loads of off-network repeats) are owned by the same companies that own broadcast and cable networks that have heavy DVR usage for their entertainment programming – which has traditionally accounted for the bulk of their revenue. So, even though we all know what’s going on, neither ad buyers nor sellers are incentivized to publicly acknowledge it or produce research documenting it.
Ad Recall Among Live Viewers is 3x Greater Than Among DVR Viewers
Ten years ago, when I was head of audience analysis at ION Media, my group conducted a study that I believe is still the best (only?) analysis comparing engagement and ad recall between Live and DVR playback viewing. At the time, ION (now owned by Scripps) was an independent network, whose programming consisted almost exclusively of off-network repeats, which are largely watched live (more than 95% of ION’s adult 25-54 average audience at the time watched its shows live). Highlighting the advertising strength of live viewing would not hurt any other part of the company.
Trying to measure ad recall a day or more after the commercials aired is not particularly meaningful unless it’s at the start of a new ad campaign with new creative that is airing for the first time. Otherwise, you don’t really know where the respondents actually saw the commercial. Much better is measuring ad recall right after the program airs.
I got the idea for this analysis from a CAB study that was conducted more than 20 years ago, which remains the best I’ve ever seen. It was an unaided ad recall study, where adults 18+ were surveyed by phone at home during primetime (I believe they got permission from respondents to call them after 10pm). It demonstrated that there was no statistical difference between broadcast and cable based on verified recall of commercials and attentiveness to the programming. There were also a lot of other interesting findings about the impact of commercial pod positioning and length. The main purpose of the study was to show that cable should have the same value per rating point as broadcast. At the time, ad-supported cable networks were not yet producing original scripted programming, and they were still considered lower quality and less valuable than the much higher rated broadcast series.
We used a similar approach, although the times had changed – we conducted our survey online.
Here’s what we did along with the results.
- We maintained a panel of television viewers through Vision Critical (later rebranded as Alida). We recruited members to participate in a special research study (there were 476 respondents).
- Respondents were allowed to watch any program they wanted, and could view the program live, at the time it originally aired, or via DVR playback. They only had to tell us the day and time they would be watching (it had to be between 7pm and 10pm).
- They were instructed to watch TV as they normally would. The only stipulation was that it had to be a regular program that contained commercials.
- Each participant received a 9-question survey at 10pm the night they watched the program. If they submitted the completed survey by 11pm that night, they were placed in a drawing to receive a $500 Amazon gift card. We made sure they understood that correct answers were not necessary to win the prize – so if they recorded a show they wouldn’t go back and try to find the right answers.
- Questions included asking respondents to list up to three plot points of the program, list all the brands they could recall in the commercials, and to list any specific messages they remembered from each brand they listed.
The results were eye opening but not really surprising.
- Attentiveness and recall to the program content was virtually identical for live viewing and DVR playback.
- The percentage of respondents who recalled one brand during commercials was 2.3 times greater among live viewers than among DVR viewers (the percentage who recalled three brands was lower, but was more than 3 times greater among live viewers).
- Brand message recall was roughly 3 times greater among live viewers.
- There was no advertising on the few streaming platforms at the time, so there was no reason to include them. But now, this type of analysis can easily include streaming.
When I left ION, I recommended that they replicate this analysis every year, so chances are there’s more recent data out there. But despite changes in the media landscape over the past 10 years, there’s no reason to think the difference in ad recall between live and DVR viewers is much different.
The Streaming Advantage
So, how does any of this apply to advertising on streaming platforms? Well, we know that DVR penetration has remained steady over the past 10 years at about 50% of the U.S. It some cases, streaming has taken the place of DVRs – ABC and FX series come to Hulu soon after airing, as do CBS shows on Paramount+ and NBC shows on Peacock. So, if you missed the original broadcast, you can catch up if you subscribe to the right streaming service. We also know that in DVR homes, a high percentage of primetime viewing is via DVRs. And virtually every study ever done on the subject has indicated 70-80% of DVR playback involves the use of fast-forwardiing through commercials.
And, as already mentioned, streaming is the very definition of appointment viewing, people can’t pause or fast-forward through the commercials, and virtually no one switches channels when they are streaming a series or movie. There are also shorter and fewer commercial pods on streaming platforms, both of which we know (from numerous research studies) positively impacts ad recall.
So, while the advantage of streaming over linear TV ads might not be quite as extreme as that of live versus DVR viewing, it is certainly substantial. I’d love to see such research done before this year’s upfront gets underway. It seems like a prime project for Nielsen or ComScore, or one of the other emerging potential audience measurement competitors to tackle (or Netflix). I think if positioned properly, it would enhance efforts to sell streaming ads without necessarily hurting anyone’s linear TV efforts.
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