Is TiVo’s Tom Rogers TV’s Al Gore?

Yesterday, Al Gore was in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Climate Change talking about the perils facing the future of our planet.

At about the same time yesterday, Tom Rogers was in front of the folks at NAPTE delivering similar dire warnings about the future of television.

Not unlike with Mr. Gore’s predictions, there are those who are skeptical about Mr. Roger’s vision of the future. As was proven with Mr. Gore’s predictions, those skeptics only serve to make the problems worse.

Will the same prove true with television?

There is little question that the digital platform has changed the playing field surrounding television. After all, digital gives viewers the ability to skip commercials through DVR devices like Mr. Rogers TiVo.

DVRs are currently found in 30% of the nation’s 114 million households. Predictions are that DVR penetration levels will reach 50%-60% by 2012.

These digital devices give viewers unprecedented control over commercials. That’s the negative part of digital, at least in the eyes of most advertisers.

But on the positive side, digital also allows return path – second-by-second – data, to be accumulated and used by advertisers.

This data gives advertisers unprecedented control over their agencies.

After all, second-by-second view duration data allows advertisers to know whether any of the impressions that they purchase actually end up making an impression.

As well, second-by-second data allows advertisers to hold their creative agencies accountable for creating advertising that viewers actually watch. If the data comes back showing that viewers watched only 10 seconds of a 60-second spot, there’s some explaining due from the creative agency.

In a nutshell, digital, and the data it delivers, allows advertisers to eliminate waste from their advertising budgets.

In a sense, you could say that it helps them to lessen their carbon footprint.

Fast-forwarding through commercials multiplies advertising’s carbon footprint by increasing the amount of wasted dollars.

While Mr. Rogers is warning advertisers that their carbon footprint is increasing, he is, at the same time, offering them different ways in which they can start to reduce it.

Mr. Gore is doing the same regarding climate change.

The belief that climate change is real really didn’t kick in until Katrina. When asked why this was, Mr. Gore replied, “We have a wonderful ally in reality.”

The ad industry is slowing coming around to the fact that if they don’t change the way that advertising is bought and sold, there will soon be no advertising left to buy and sell.

Mr. Rogers is doing what he can to accelerate the process. But, as we all know, people don’t like to face inconvenient truths.

Let’s hope that advertising doesn't need its own Katrina to expedite the process.

If The IAB Wants To Improve Creative Online, They Need To Change Their Definition Of Performance

The head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Randall Rothenberg, told a group of Wall Street investors on Monday, that his organization is going to push to promote the creative potential for online advertising.

One way to achieve this, according to Rothenberg, is to stop the slide toward a “performance-based” Internet advertising economy.

Which is exactly the opposite of what needs to be done.

The online marketplace is all about performance. After all, everything that happens online can be measured. If a marketing manager is not using the data at hand, he is doing his/her brand a disservice.

The amount of data available from the online marketplace is unprecedented. Yet, our definition of a commercial’s "performance" is still, traditional, at best.

Which, I would argue, makes it antiquated. And therein lies the problem.

Reach and frequency used to be the lynch pins upon which all advertising was bought and sold. After all, that’s all we had.

But as the depth of an impression can now be measured through view-duration metrics, we are no longer constrained by reach and frequency.

As the argument continues over the best definition of engagement, no one seems to be arguing with the fact that more engagement with a brand’s advertising is better than less.

And since engagement takes place over some period of time, one can use the measurement of time spent as a proxy for engagement.

Or, I would argue, as a proxy for performance.

Agencies used to tell their clients that the objective of any advertising was a greater share of market. And the best way to increase share of market was to increase share of mind.

Share of mind came through reach and frequency.

But now that we can measure the time one spends with a brand’s advertising, one could argue that share of time will lead to an increase in share of mind.

Which ultimately leads to share of market.

If Mr. Rothenberg would start to position online as less of a reach platform and more of a relationship platform, he would better be able to sell the value of time.

Relationships, after all, take time to develop.

By measuring the time spent with a brand’s messaging, the depth of the relationship can start to be determined.

As can the performance of the advertising.

Which is why I believe that the creative renaissance that will, and must occur in online advertising, can only happen by being performance-based.

We just need to change our definition of performance from how many saw the advertising, to how long were they involved with the advertising.

Granted, there’s not yet a direct correlation between time spent with a message and sales. Obviously, a lot depends on how the message is crafted.

That said, it is safe to assume that there is a direct correlation between time not spent with the message and a lack of sales.

After all, seldom do we buy from strangers.

On The Digital Platform, All Creative is Just Zeros and Ones

How’s that for a reality check?

The same TV commercial that your agency spent months preparing, and another couple of months shooting, is really nothing more than numbers when it runs on the digital platform.

Did your agency spend a fortune to license the swelling, majestic music from the movie The Way We Were?

Doesn’t matter.

Do all the focus groups tell you that the commercial is a home run and that the right people in the right audience will watch each and every second?

Doesn’t matter.

How about the agency? No doubt they’ve been saying this commercial will work wonders at pulling peoples’ heartstrings as well as their checkbooks out of their pockets.

Again, doesn’t matter.

The wonderful thing about numbers is that they are completely objective.

Which is why I especially like one final number that the digital platform also delivers. This is the number that indicates how long people decided to watch this piece of advertising art.

Whether on average, folks watched 10% of the spot. Or, 100%.

According to this number, people watched none, some, or, all of your commercial. I’m assuming that if your an advertiser, having more of your commercial watched is better than having less of your commercial watched.

Not only because you paid a small fortune to have the commercial produced so, yes, it would be a nice return on your production dollars if people watched it.

But also because the longer people watch, the more exposure you are accumulating for your brand. And isn’t brand exposure why you are paying for all those impressions in the first place?

The amount of time that a person spends watching a commercial is now measured by servers everywhere. It’s just not being released.

The number that advertisers should be most interested in is the number that many advertisers never even see. The number of impressions, on the other hand, are paraded out with much fanfare.

I like the way that Matt Freeman put it about a week ago in a column in MediaPost, “An impression shouldn’t be called an impression if it doesn’t make one.”

Bull’s-eye!

To date, according to Mr. Freeman, “digital media has underplayed the very magic that makes the digital world special: consumer engagement.”

The digital platform can measure engagement in terms of time spent with the message. Obviously, this works best when the viewer initiates the interaction with the commercial. When the viewer presses the play button,it means they are interested.

How long they continue to watch tells the advertiser how interesting their commercial was.

If an agency is paid to come up with advertising that captures a viewer’s attention, engages and involves them in the message, and then motivates them to go out and buy the product, well then, you have a damn good commercial.

The digital platform allows you to measure two of these elements that are necessary for success. 1. Did it get the viewer’s attention? 2. If so, did it engage/involve them in the message?

Yes, it’s true; you can certainly involve someone in a message and not end up selling the product. But it’s also equally true, that it’s difficult to persuade someone to buy your product if they don’t first watch the commercial.

Sales will happen, or not happen, after the commercial runs. The chance of a sale happening is better if the commercial is watched.

Numbers aren’t human. They don’t lie.

People either watched the commercial.

Or, didn’t.

Which is why on the digital platform, advertisers should be less worried about how many impressions they get.

And more worried about whether their commercial actually made one.

What’s A Second Of Time Worth Anyways?

Well, if you’re one of the advertisers in the upcoming Super Bowl, a second of time costs $100,000 (each 30-second commercial during the game is estimated to cost a record $3 million).

That’s for media only.

The cost of production is another, well, cost. The average cost of producing a national commercial these days, according to the 4A’s, is $360,000. That rounds out to $12,000 per second. Super Bowl commercials, of course, cost even more, as advertisers want to score high in the ratings that appear in the days following the game.

Many advertisers use their Super Bowl commercial as a springboard for a new campaign – surrounding it with other elements – online, print, etc. This apparently helps them to justify the $100,000 per second for airtime.

Of course, advertisers also justify the $100,000 per second by the number of viewers who will watch the game. Last year’s Super Bowl drew 97.5 million viewers. If those same numbers are reached this year, it will come out to a respectable three cents per viewer.

As for the cost of production, because most Super Bowl commercials are watched as intently—if not more so—than the game itself, advertisers are probably getting their money’s worth, as each and every second is consumed.

But the Super Bowl is an anomaly in advertising, both in cost, and in the amount of attention paid to the commercials.

Come Monday, February 2nd, everything will go back to normal. Commercials will cost less to run. And, will mostly be ignored by the majority of people who are exposed to them.

But the cost of production - $12,000 per second – will be the same.

How do agencies continue to justify $12,000/second when the viewing audience continues to fragment? And, when they have digital data in hand that shows them exactly how long viewers are watching—or not watching—the commercial for.

What is the objective of each second of a commercial that is produced? Obviously, the overall objective of the commercial is to sell more product. But it’s difficult to sell more product if the commercial isn’t watched. Which means that it can be argued that the objective of each second of a commercial is to be watched.

If you’re an advertiser, do you know if your seconds are being watched or not? TiVo can tell you. As can Visible Measures, Google Analytics and TNS. As can most any video player on any publisher’s site. As well as any on-demand platform offered by cable providers.

Are you, as an advertiser, asking for this data? And, if so, are you then holding your agency accountable for delivering what they promised they would deliver?

Viewership in the commercial.

That is, after all, their job, isn’t it? And shouldn’t they be paid based on how well they do their job?

If the agency involves viewers for thirty seconds, that commercial has a better chance of working for the advertiser than a 30-second commercial in which viewers watch only 10 seconds.

If it works better for the advertiser, shouldn’t the advertiser then be willing to pay the agency more for creating it?

In these tough economic times, accountability is becoming the main objective of any marketing manager. Marketing managers currently hold media accountable through make goods.

Maybe it’s time that they start holding creative accountable as well.

After all, if a second of time is worth $12,000, the question all advertisers should be asking today is a simple one.

Are you getting your money’s worth?

The Biggest Brand In The World Has Just Changed Its Tactics. Should Your Brand Follow Suit?

The United States of America has just changed its positioning. Part of the new positioning is to represent a clean break from business as usual. Putting it simply, to become more honest and transparent.

As President Obama said yesterday, “I will, I hope, do something to make government trustworthy in the eyes of the American people, in the days and weeks, months and years to come.”

Trustworthy. Transparent. Honest. Three words that any brand would be happy to have associated with them. And yet, so few do.

The fact is that brands have no choice but to change if they want to survive. With the new communication tools now in the hands of the majority, transparency is here whether brands want to accept it or not.

It used to be that consumers would take advertising at face value. Today, that is no longer the case. Today, advertising is, at best, an opinion.

What’s more, it’s the marketer’s opinion, which means it’s from a biased source, quickly verified or found to be false through a few clicks of a computer keyboard.

To make matters worse, it’s not the only opinion being offered about the brand. In a matter of seconds, a consumer can quickly find other opinions, from current and past users of the brand. Opinions that are assumed to be less biased and that will instantaneously confirm or refute the advertising that an advertiser has spent months and millions on.

Not surprisingly, it’s these less-biased opinions that consumers most frequently act upon.

What is surprising is how slow advertisers have been to recognize that transparency is here to stay. If they had, you would think that the tone of advertising would have changed. Authenticity and honesty would be the over-riding theme that most marketers would want to communicate.

Of course, it’s impossible to create authenticity in a brand if none exists. That would be inauthentic.

Which is probably why so many marketers fall back on superlatives, claiming that their brand is the best, or the fastest, or the cheapest. All the while, making the disclaimers so small that they figure no one bother to read them.

Legal? Yes. Right? No.

Today, too many marketers still believe that people take advertising on face value, when, in fact, that is no longer the case.

We took a former president on face value and look where it got us. This new guy's different. This new guys seems to understand that while rhetoric is important, it's who he is and what he does that puts meaning in his words.

Over the course of this last election, this country has learned a lot about how a brand should communicate if it wants to be believed.

And, that only if it is believed, will it ultimately be voted for.

Or, purchased.

Look at the tactics of the last administration as advertising as it used to be. And, the tactics of this new administration as advertising is it will be.

The people know that the world has changed. And, along with it, the art of communication.

It’s time that brands start to understand this as well.

Time-Spent Gains Another Convert

It was announced on Monday that Matt Freeman has gone and changed the name of his company from GoFish to Betawave.

What’s interesting about the move is how Betawave will value media. Traditionally, media’s value has been based on the number of people it reaches. Betawave is built on the premise that the value of media lies in the amount of a viewer’s attention it garners.

Obviously, Mr. Freeman would not have done this if his network wasn’t one of the highest ranking (currently third among people 18 to 34) in regards to the amount of time that people spend on the sites that Betawave represents.

Betawave calls themselves an Attention-Based Media Company—"the world’s largest pure play digital media company as measured by minutes of consumers attention for youths (6 – 17) and Moms."

As the Betawave site says, “Without attention, the value of reach is a stretch.”

Now, carry that thinking over to video advertising. The cost of video advertising today is still primarily justified on the basis of reach. But as Betawave so correctly states, “Without attention, the value of reach is a stretch.”

Digital information, in the form of view-duration data, can now tell advertisers what a viewer’s attention rate was to their commercial.

Most advertisers will tell you that an engaged impression is more valuable than a non-engaged impression.

And yet, most advertisers still justify the cost of commercial creation on the number of people the spot will reach.

I understand why this was the case before view duration data became so prevalent.

But now that advertisers can know how long their spots actually involved the viewers for, how long will it be before this data is used to hold creative accountable for delivering what it was paid to deliver?

Time spent with the brand.

Here’s to Mr. Freeman. Welcome to the club.

How Advertisers Can Implement Accountability Without Stifling Creativity

Trying times, these times we’re in.

Budgets are increasingly coming under greater and greater scrutiny. And yet, most marketers still don’t have a clear strategy as how best to deal with accountability.

Especially when it comes to the creativity of their advertising.

How do marketers make accountability a friend and not an enemy of creativity?

A client of mine once told me that advertising consisted of two things – manufacturing and distribution. First, you manufacture the message. And then, you distribute it.

His thinking was almost genius in its simplicity.

He thought this way because his marketing budget consisted of two columns. One column was the budget for manufacturing the message – production.

The other column was the budget for distributing the message – media.

The manufacturing column was usually about 10% of the distribution column.

The creative department of the agency was only concerned with the amount of money that was in the manufacturing column. After all, that amount of the budget was all they were responsible for. And therefore, it could be argued that it is really all that they should be held directly accountable for.

If the production budget is used to create a commercial that is thirty seconds long, then the agency’s creativity is accountable for whether or not those thirty seconds were engaging enough to be watched.

After all, a watched second of a produced commercial offers a better Return on Investment for an advertiser’s production dollars than an unwatched second.

Today, view duration data tells advertisers whether seconds are watched or not. So they will know what the Return On Investment is on their production dollars.

And, in turn, will be able to hold creativity accountable.

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t mentioned the “S” word yet.

Obviously, sales are the holy grail of any marketing campaign. But sales indicate the Return on Investment on the total marketing budget – both the manufacturing and distribution columns.

The question we’re trying to answer is how can we hold creativity accountable?

To hold creativity accountable, it must be isolated from the total marketing budget.

Today’s digital data allows us to isolate the results of the different component parts of a marketing budget. By isolating results, advertisers will be able to hold the different parts of a marketing campaign accountable for delivering what they were paid to deliver.

Including creativity.

Granted, people may watch a commercial and not be motivated to buy the product at the end. The fact is, this happens more often that not.

On the other hand, you can pretty much guarantee that people won’t buy the product if they don’t watch the commercial.

In other words, watching the commercial is a necessary precursor to sales.

So there is value in view duration.

Which is why view duration should be the first criteria that creativity is held accountable for.

Sales can be the second.

But my guess is that if you make agencies accountable for increasing the view duration of their messages, the chances are good that sales will follow.

Should Advertisers Pay For Content Creation Based On The Amount Of Time That Viewers Spend With The Commercial Asset?

Interesting concept, isn’t it?

Advertisers currently pay for content creation based on the amount of time that their agency spends creating the commercial. In other words, they pay based on agency time sheets, i.e. effort.

What the digital platform now allows is for agencies to pay based on viewer time sheets, i.e. view duration data. Or, to put it simply, outcome.

So, let's rephrase the opening question so it reads something like this. Should advertisers pay for outcome rather than effort?

Makes it a rhetorical question, to say the least.

Paying for outcome rather than effort ultimately leads to a performance-based content creation model. Why some advertisers get hung up on this type of thinking is that they define performance as being one thing and one thing only.

Sales.

Granted, sales are still the ultimate measure of the performance of an ad campaign. But digital data now allows advertisers to measure and monetize the smaller, individual performances, that are essential to maximize the ultimate result.

A marketing budget is divided into two distinct areas – manufacturing and distribution. By paying for the manufacturing part – creation and production - according to viewer-based time sheets, advertisers will be able to determine what their return is on that part of their budget.

It's a bit like figuring out the ROI on creativity. After all, a produced second that is watched offers a better Return on Investment on production dollars spent than a produced second that isn’t watched.

View duration data is now being offered by a variety of measurement companies, both online and off, including TiVo, Visible Measures and TNS.

It will be difficult for advertisers to have this data in hand, data that could well say that only 10% of their commercial was viewed, and still be comfortable paying their agency full-fare for the other 90% of the commercial.

This type of “return path data” wasn’t available before. Now that it is, advertisers and agencies have two options. Ignore it. Or, learn how to profit from it.

We recommend the latter.

After all, the secret to success in the digital world is learning how to make the inevitable, invaluable.

And if time-spent data is anything, it’s inevitable.

The Biggest Change In 2009 Is That Time Spent Can Now Be Measured. And What Can Be Measured Can Be Monetized.

Not so very long ago, in the pre-digital days, we couldn’t accurately measure how long somebody watched a commercial for.

Nielsen was the measurement god and unfortunately, Nielsen wasn’t granular enough to let us know if people were truly watching anything, much less, advertising.

Fact is, those in the ad business made a ton of money on the inefficiencies of Nielsen.

But in today’s digital era, things are quite different. Second-by-second data is not only available for programming and websites, but also for individual commercials. Which means advertisers will know how well, or, how poorly, their commercial worked at involving a viewer who decided to opt-in and watch.

Is this important? Well, yes. Why? I think that the best way to answer that question is with another question.

If an agency creates a one-minute commercial that involves viewers for the full minute, is that commercial more valuable to the advertiser than a one-minute commercial that involves viewers for only ten seconds?

Is the first commercial considered to be a good commercial and the second commercial considered to be a bad commercial?

In the past, we didn’t have second-by-second view duration data. So good commercials were worth no more than bad commercials. But today, with this data in hand, advertisers will know when viewers watched say, only ten percent of their spot. Once knowing this, you can hardly blame an advertiser for not wanting to pay full fare for the other 90%.

Making this even more important is the fact that we now have the ability to extend the brand conversation beyond the boundaries of the thirty-second spot. Once we make the commercials longer, the ability to involve someone becomes even more critical.

To this end, we have developed a compensation model that allows involving work — good work — to be worth more than non-involving work — bad work. We call it the Viewer Time Spent Compensation model, or, VTS for short.

Why VTS is unique is that it allow advertisers to hold their agencies accountable for creating good commercials. That’s because with VTS, the longer viewers watch, the more the agency makes.

And, vice versa.

When we present this model to advertisers, we tell them that VTS means that failure will no longer be lucrative for the agency. As you can well imagine, advertisers tend to like this. Paying for failure seldom sits well with anyone, especially advertisers.

When we present to ad agencies we tell them that VTS allows good work to be worth more than bad work. As you can well imagine, the more creative agencies like this. The not-so-creative agencies, well, they're not too happy to see us.

Because therein, you see, lies the rub. Up until now, good work and bad work has been completely subjective. Which meant that good creative agencies and bad creative agencies were paid about the same.

With VTS, the worth of a spot is determined by an impartial observer.

The viewer.

The data will indicate whether viewers found the work to be worth their time or not. If the spot is worth the viewers' time, then advertisers don’t mind spending the money to pay their agency well. After all, time is finite—24 hours in a day—so the more time spent with one advertiser’s brand, the less time is available to spend with the competitor’s brand.

As people tend not to buy from strangers, it can be argued that time spent with a brand, and/or its messaging, will ultimately lead to sales.

Ask an advertiser if the worth of a spot should affect the cost of the spot and most will tell you yes. Interestingly enough, most of your good creative agencies will say the same thing.

So it seems as if time spent is something of value that both agencies and advertisers already agree on. At least, in theory.

Here's to betting that 2009 is the year that theory becomes practice.

Impressions Or Involvement. Advertisers Can Have One Or The Other, But Not Both.

One of the most difficult choices regarding video advertising that advertisers are going to have to make this year is whether they want impressions or involvement.

Impressions are the “feel good” way to go. They offer advertisers a big number and big numbers feel all warm and fuzzy. “You’ll be reaching over ten million people with a frequency of three,” the media agency guru will tell his clients.

Hard to fire a marketing director when he/she is talking to ten million people, isn’t it?

But an impression, or exposure to the message, isn’t the same as involvement in the message.

At any particular time, only about 10% of consumers are interested in any particular product. Which means that up to 90% of those impressions could be deemed a waste of money. Not by media agencies, mind you. Media agencies will argue that they need to reach that many to find those that are interested.

In other words, waste is a cost of doing business. True, back in the day.

But it’s now 2009. The day has become digital. And digital means that viewers are in control to decide for themselves what is relevant to them by opting-in to messages of interest.

And, when they do, what becomes most important is how long they’re involved in the message for. If the advertiser has created a :60 spot aimed at a particular market segment, and that market segment has clicked-in to find out more, the last thing that advertiser wants is for that viewer to click-out without watching the entire commercial.

Look at it this way. The viewer has come to you, the advertiser. They have knocked on your door, they have asked to find out more. If they watch just ten percent of the message that you have created just for them, ignoring the remaining ninety percent of the message, that is an opportunity lost.

And that is cause enough to fire the marketing director. Or, at least the agency that created the commercial.

Video advertising is dividing itself into two camps. The intrusive model of video advertising – pre-roll and in-stream – bought and paid for through reach and frequency, i.e. impressions.

And the opt-in model of advertising—where instead of paying for millions to reach the thousand that are interested—advertisers allow viewers to decide for themselves what is relevant through opting-in.

The former gives advertisers a big number in terms of how many are exposed to the message. The latter has the chance to give advertisers a big number in terms of how long viewers are engaged with their message.

Arguably, how long a viewer stays with the message describes the quality of the experience the viewer has with the content. And, therefore, makes one impression more valuable than another.

Advertisers constantly talk about how they have accepted that control has shifted to the viewer. They talk a good game, but unfortunately, their actions belie their words. The fact is, time spent is really nothing more than an impression in the control of the viewer. And yet, advertisers keep falling back on impressions.

In the future, intrusive advertising and opt-in advertising will exist side-by-side. The former will be necessary to create awareness about brands. The latter, to create advocates for brands.

Each will have their strengths and weaknesses.

Where we have to be careful is in deceiving ourselves that they are truly one and the same.

The 90% Solution

Last month, new TiVo-based research was released that revealed that more than 90% of DVR users “almost always” or “always” fast-forward through commercials.

This is 20% to 30% higher than what previous numbers have indicated. And, only 10% away from the magic number of 100%.

According to other projections, 36% of TV homes will have DVRs by 2012. The math basically does itself – 36% of homes fast-forwarding through 90% of the advertising. Ouch.

And yet, according to an article in the New York Times, advertisers are putting their marketing dollars into national television at levels reminiscent of prosperous economic times.

Go figure.

It must be the delusional power of scale. According to one senior executive at a media buying agency, “The shoe hasn’t dropped yet.”

Really? I think this executive is wrong. The shoe has dropped. It just hasn’t hit the floor yet.

Cumulatively, the four broadcast networks are down 10% in actual live viewers, with ABC, NBC and FOX, all drawing around a million viewers less each night than they did last season.

According to the chief investment officer of another media agency, “When the economy goes into a recession, marketers are looking at ad platforms that generate the most efficiency.” I guess to this exec, having 90% of the commercials skipped is his definition of efficient.

We have all heard the following argument, spacious as it may be—that even when viewers fast-forward through commercials—the brand still registers. And, perhaps that is true. If so, and if presence rather than persuasion is what advertisers truly want, then why don’t they just run a logo rather than spending half a million dollars to produce a commercial?

Wouldn’t the result be the same?

Starcom, the world’s largest media agency—a company that buys TV time for a living—argues that while the TiVo data is correct, the data also reveals that only 10% of viewers cite commercial-skipping as the main benefit of having TiVo. 80% of TiVo owners say the main reason for owning a DVR is to record programs for later viewing.

C’mon, Starcom, tell the rest of the story. What you’re not saying is that most programs are recorded to be viewed later that same evening. In fact, many 30-minute programs are recorded only to be viewed 10 minutes after their original start time so that people can watch the program without commercials and still finish the show when it is normally scheduled to finish.

So, while the main, stated benefit of a DVR is to watch programs later, the main reason for watching programs later is to be able to skip the commercials.

At a rate of 90%, mind you.

I keep coming back to that number if only to see how much larger it will need to become before advertisers start admitting that the intrusive manner in which they impose advertising on viewers is no longer effective. And that scale has become, at best, a false god to kneel before.

Unfortunately, scale, like nicotine, is addictive. It’s what advertisers fall back on because they don’t know what else will work. Smokers might try lollipops or chewing gum, but sooner or later, most come back to cigarettes. Even though they know that smoking can kill them.

It basically says so right on the package.

Maybe most advertisers also know that continuing to run advertising that intrudes on programming in the hope of achieving some sense of scale, also runs the risk of killing their brand.

What if there was a warning label pasted across each TV media plan, saying something along the lines of lines of, buying this TV media proposal could be detrimental to the health of your brand?

Chances are, it wouldn’t stop advertisers from okaying the plan. But it might give the media agencies a legal out. “We warned you that it wouldn’t work,” they can say. After all, cigarette companies are being sued.

As we enter 2009, maybe we should look at the 90% figure as a blessing in disguise. For lack of a better name, call it the 90% solution. What it tells us is that the best we can hope to achieve is for 10% of the users of any platform to pay any attention to any advertising whatsoever.

Of course, since 10% is not a very large number, and large numbers are what make advertisers comfortable, then we will need to offer them something to aggregate. Something that can add up to a large number. Something like time spent with the message itself.

After all, not only can time spent be measured. It can also scale.

If 10% of a million viewers watch only ten seconds of a sixty-second spot, an advertiser would have 1 million seconds of time spent with the brand. If the same advertiser had only a quarter as many viewers watch all sixty seconds, the amount of total time spent with the brand would be 1.5 million seconds.

A larger number, yet with only 25% of the number of viewers.

On digital platforms, where viewers are in control of what they watch and when, time spent is starting to trump scale. How long viewers spend with a message is beginning to be recognized as offering just as much value as how many see it.

Instead of worrying about 90% skipping the message, advertisers should be thinking about how to get the 10% who do start to watch, to watch up to 90% of the message.

Because that’s the scale that’s going to matter as we head deeper into the digital age.

2009 should prove to be interesting, to say the least.