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Tivo, DVRs Don't Hurt Advertisements
Thu May 06, 2010 at 10:00 AM ETTags: TiVo, Industry Trends, Advertising (all tags)
According to a study by Duke University, the TiVo effect is a myth.
It seems a little late to be worrying about the effect of DVRs, doesn't it? TiVo has been around for a while now, so you'd think the whole thing would have been sorted out at this point. Still, a new study from Duke University was just released, debunking the TiVo effect.
"Companies are afraid of a ‘TiVo effect’ and are changing their media spending as a result," says Duke professor Carl Mela. "But we find no change in people’s shopping patterns when we compare a group that has TiVo with a group that doesn’t."
The study shows that 95 percent of people still watch television live, though that number seems far too high. It also showed that people would skip commercials without the TiVo, by either changing the channel or doing something else around the house.
Mela and his team set out to quantify the effect of DVRs, but were surprised when they came up with nothing. "We tried a vast array of methodological approaches to find a DVR effect," says Mela. "We just couldn’t."
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