Does Taping Affect Ad Business?

It’s one of the ongoing questions of the VCR age: What effect does the VCR have on the number of people who actually watch commercials?

So far, nobody can really be sure. Advertising executives “really have no hard research on that phenomenon,” said Saatchi & Saatchi’s Betsy Frank. “But since we’re all media consumers as well as media analysts, it’s pretty much of a certainty that people do it.”

Part of the problem in getting hard-and-fast data stems from what some perceive as glitches in Nielsen’s rating system: Currently, the company assigns a show its rating based on when the show is taped, not on when it’s actually viewed. While Nielsen has the capability to measure actual watchings of a taped show, the process is still “in a test mode,” Paul Lindstrom said.

Currently, Frank said, “anything that’s recorded off the air is assumed to be played back and to be played back intact.” And while any inaccuracies are probably fairly slight, “in all, we still hate it, because we’re obviously paying for more of an audience than we’re actually getting,” she said.

As for “zapping”--fast-forwarding through the commercials on a videotape--it seems to be less of a concern than one might think. “I know of no evidence to indicate that the primary purpose of taping shows is to avoid commercials,” said Henry Breitrose, professor of communications at Stanford University, who believes that taking the trouble to zap commercials implies a level of concentration that most people don’t employ in their TV watching.

“There’s a myth in that people are actually watching TV. When you watch television, you’re probably doing something else as well”--and therefore are not interested enough to bother skipping the commercials, he said.

But Carol Ann Barman, who tapes three soap operas a day, readily admits that the ability to skip the commercials is one of the benefits of using her VCR. “Who wants to watch commercials?” she said, adding, “Who wants to know about Ziploc’s new ‘gripper zipper’?”--proving to advertisers that even the staunchest zappers aren’t immune to brand awareness.