Advanced Television

Online TV viewers will tolerate more ads

November 24, 2010

Turner Broadcasting has released research, conducted with Magna Global, which the company says indicates a willingness by online video viewers to watch higher ad loads.

Online streams of TV shows could support as many ads as broadcast television shows, Turner says. The test had Turner assigning visitors to its TNT and TBS websites. The first set of visitors saw about 60 seconds of ads, the second between 8 and 10 minutes of ads, and the third 16 to 20 minutes of ads. For 30-minute shows, viewers tended to watch 40 per cent of the episode if it had a minute of ads, and 37 per cent of the episode if it had 16 minutes of ads. For hour long shows, viewers watched 59 per cent of the episode if there was just over a minute of ads and 49 per cent of the episode if it had 20 minutes of ads.

Jack Wakshlag, Turner’s chief research officer, says the research shows that viewers often don’t watch an entire TV show online – just as they often don’t watch a full episode on television – and that they watched for about the same number of total minutes no matter how many ads they were shown.

Categories: Advertising, Articles, Consumer Behaviour, OTT, Research