Everything is going to be on-demand sooner or later and recently, there’s been a lot of chatter about how to best make that work out when it comes to television. As we suspected, according to a new survey, consumers are willing to sit through ads if it means they can watch what they wan, when they want. Entertainment Media Research’s 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey, which surveyed 1,608 consumers in the UK between the ages of 15 and 54 found that:
– 70% of those surveyed said that they would prefer free, ad-supported on-demand services if given the option knowing they wouldn’t be able to skip the ads
– When forced to choose between two different types of paid models—pay-per-view and monthly subscriptions for unlimited content—consumers favored PPV slightly (57 percent), and EMR believes that both models can “find their own market as long as the payment terms and content on offer are sufficiently attractive.”
– 46% said that they fast forward or skip past ads “all of the time,” with another 33 percent saying “most of the time.” Another 15 percent said they would skip ads “some of the time” and only six percent choosing rarely or never.
– 63% said that they “actively try to avoid as many television ads as possible.” A note on that, yes, this is the same group that said they would trade watching ads for on demand services.
What have we learned? On demand television would make consumers happy, which could lead to more eyeballs per program. Hell, we’d watch Project Runway if we could watch it whenever we wanted. Consumers recognize that there is a price to be paid for such a service. That leaves it up to the industry to figure out how to create ads that are non-skippable in order to lock in as many eyeballs as possible. It’s not a bad place to be in all considered, no?
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