People who own DVRs watch an average of two-thirds of all commercials, according to the TV research outfit Nielsen. That’s not as bad as many ad execs and media purveyors had feared.
“People are actually playing back more of the commercials than we thought,” Steve Sternberg, executive VP and director of audience analysis at ad-buying agency Magna Global Media Research, said in the New York Times. “People are buying DVRs not because they want to time-shift all of their viewing and skip all commercials, but because they want to time-shift some of their viewing.”
There are about 15 million DVRs in use in the US with DVR owners accounting for about 6% of US TV viewing. Some 4.5 million of the DVRs are TiVos.