Advanced Television

TiVo ratings show most skip ads

August 3, 2009

DVR specialist TiVo has unveiled a first look at its Pure Programme Ratings, which were derived using the number of TiVo subscribers viewing a programme, live or Time-shifted, excluding the commercials, to arrive at the total potential audience for the commercials during a given programme.

Current industry services measure a programme's viewership rating without separating the programme content from the commercials that air during it. TiVo's Pure Programme Ratings separates the ratings and makes it possible to determine the percentage of potential viewers lost during a programme's commercial breaks.

“For example, the May 7th episode of Grey’s Anatomy had a Pure Programme Time-shifted audience of 17.0," said Todd Juenger, Vice President & General Manager, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement. "That means there was potential to deliver a commercial audience of 17.0 ratings points, if every viewer watching stuck around during the commercial breaks. However, looking at the Commercial Time-shifted rating, we see most viewers didn’t and commercials running during the programme only received a 2.7 rating. Simply put, 14.3 ratings points worth of audience or 84 per cent of available viewers during time-shifted viewing were lost to fast-forwarding during commercials."

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