TV advertisers to press 'fast-forward'

Advertisers are combating the increasing use of digital video recorders (DVR) with "fast-forward" TV commercials, designed to be viewed at 12-times normal speed.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the new type of advertising is intended to ensure viewers get the gist of commercial messages even when flicking through recordings at high-speed on timeshift services such as Sky+.

Paul Lee, director of technology, media and telecoms at Deloitte, told the newspaper that the ads feature prolonged shots of brands, logos and well-known advertising 'characters'. He said that people actually pay more attention to commercial messages in fast-forward compared with viewing at normal speeds.

"When people are fast forwarding, they are actually paying closer attention because they want to ensure they do not miss the resumption of the TV show," said Lee.

"All adverts have a certain style and it is very easy to guess what an advert is for without actually watching it properly."

Lee said that the increase of DVR viewing has also meant that the slots at the end of each ad break are selling at a premium, because "recall for such slots is likely to be highest".

He revealed that a well-known perfume brand recently bought up the final ad slot of almost every commercial break during musical comedy show Glee on Channel 4.

The growth of DVR viewing was expected to severely impact the advertising revenues gained from linear TV, but recent figures suggest the opposite is actually occurring.

According to a report by TV marketing body Thinkbox, 89% of people said that they used on-demand services such as ITV Player and BBC iPlayer to catch up on linear TV.

The Tellyport study, conducted by strategy & research company Decipher, also found that the amount of on-demand TV viewing conducted to discover new content has halved since 2008, falling from 22% to 11%.

Lee said that the increase of people using social networking sites while watching TV has meant that viewers don't want to "lose out on the collective experience" of seeing live events such as The X Factor final.