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.
20 responses to “Hollywood: The iPhone Is Killing Television”
I don’t know about everyone else but I never paid attention to the ads even before DVR, laptops and modern cellphones.
That’s balderdash! Commercials have no impact at all even if I watch them, it’s time to think different, even if you think it just works. They think it’s the choice of a new generation, so they just do it. We try harder, not to pay attention because commercials give us nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea. Diamonds are forever, but commercials aren’t. I skip them, and I’m lovin’ it. But, go ahead and have it your way. Can you hear me now??
Good riddance.
No, the quality of tv shows is killing television.
Hollywood: “Stop liking stuff we don’t approve of”!
I used VCRs for well over a decade before DVRs to avoid commercials.
A greater threat is people turning to their phone as commercials come on. They text, play games, scroll through Facebook and Cult of Mac, returning to TV when the commercials end.
Hollywood needs to embrace the fact that the age of the family sitting down after dinner to watch TV is over.
We watch things on tv, we DVR them and watch them days later, we watch them online on the network site or hulu etc. We buy them from itunes, Amazon.
The ratings system doesn’t cover all that. It doesn’t even really cover the 10 million+ folks it implies that it covers. The tech is there to count a much greater audience sample. But they are being pushed to use it. If the networks really want to know what folks are watching then they need to start that push. And they need to give credit to shows for other ways of seeing the eps and the money generated there.
Then perhaps we won’t see good shows that could be great being left to fallow while Jersey Shore spinoff 6 is starting up.
“because commercials give us nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea.”
which is ironic cause half the ads are treatments for those very things
Yer and whos going to be the smartass that launches (or even downloads) an app that disables your phone during ads?