Even if we sort of love commercials around here, that doesn’t mean we like to have to sit through them when we’re streaming content. A recent report on Cord Cutting figured out that Netflix probably saves viewers from about 160 hours of commercials. Even if that’s just six of those horribly long ads for heart medications, that’s still a lot of hours. Think of all the time you’ve lost watching them.
Here’s their math:
From Nielsen, we know that a typical hour of cable TV includes 15 minutes, 38 seconds – or 938 seconds – of commercials. Multiply that figure by 1.67 repeating and you get 1,563.3 (also repeating) seconds of commercials per day. That’s 570,616.7 seconds per year, which works out to 158.5 hours. So each subscriber saves him or herself about 160 hours of commercials per year by streaming their content through Netflix.
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Sometimes, it’s OK that there are commercials. They give you a chance to order delivery, run to the bathroom, or pay attention to whoever wants to talk to you while you’re zoning out. But it’s nice to have a choice. That might be something networks think about as they move towards OTT and subscription services. Hulu got the message. If it’s worth it to a consumer to pay a few extra bucks to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine without commercial breaks, they will. Some though, will sit through those Geico commercials.
That’s why advertisers and their partners need to get better at listening to audiences. Because even if that viewer doesn’t feel like paying extra for a commercial-free session of Law & Order, that doesn’t mean they need to sit through bad advertising. Instead of banging their heads against the wall thinking about the “end of TV” as we know it, network execs should be thinking about pricing tiers and dealing with advertisers who only deal with forward-thinking agencies that get it. There are lots of different audience types. There should be a streaming style for all of them.