DVR Users View Commericals in First Day, Nielsen Says

[Gregg Lengling]

If a commercial is going to be seen by a viewer using a digital video recorder, its most likely they'll see it in the first day or so after it was originally aired, according to a new analysis by The Nielsen Company.

http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=11572

[Tom Snyder]

While that's true of most of what we watch, I was amazed at how many shows we watched in January that still were running Christmas ads! First thought was that someone had screwed up and forgotten to change the ads after the holidays.. then we realized that we had recorded them in December.

[kjnorman]

December?  Oh you light weight...

On our SD Tivo we still have shows that are approaching a year old - just in case we might watch them one day....

[gparris]

The odd thing about commercials for my household is that these certainly are not always ignored, for some we actually stop fast forwarding and back up for, if these catch our notice.
(Sometimes the ads are more interesting than the shows recorded).

At first advertisers actually hated DVRs, but now, people like me are more or less  "captive" to them as I scan past them to my recorded programmes.

If you don't have a DVR, or are watching the show in real time even with one, you might go for that quick break elsewhere and ignore the commercials, but not usually when you have a DVR.
I certainly hope the advertisers are taking this into account, too.