Remember the gnashing of teeth from the television industry when the DVR was first introduced – it would kill TV ads. Well, the real threat to TV advertising is your iPhone.
The iPhone and other smartphones account for 60 percent of the distractions from TV ads, according to a behavioral survey. The study participants reported turning away from the TV – and the advertising – whenever they received a text or a call.
With the DVR, even if you hit the ‘fast forward’ button, the advertising message registers with you.
How will Hollywood react to the findings? Will we see campaigns similar to that against distracted driving? Perhaps the industry will create an iPhone app that disables your phone when ads appear?
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
