Orlando, Fla. - Contrary to previous beliefs, owners of digital video recorders (DVRs) watch about two-thirds of commercials during TV programming, according to audience data in a new report from the Nielsen Company.

While this is due in part to viewers' habits of watching programming like sports and news at their scheduled broadcast times, when ads can't be skipped, the report found that DVR owners still watch 40% of the ads they could have skipped past.

Viewing of commercials was found to fall as time elapsed from the original broadcast.

"People are actually playing back more of the commercials than we thought," Steve Sternberg, executive vice president and director of audience analysis at Magna Global Media Research, told The New York Times.

"People are buying DVRs not because they want to time-shift all of their viewing and skip all commercials, but because they want to time-shift some of their viewing."

DVR owners are also younger, better educated and have higher incomes than the average U.S. household, Nielsen found.

Separate data on consumer electronics found 19% of households own a personal video device, such as a portable DVD player, cell phone or iPod, but Nielsen said "playing video on a personal device has not yet become an ingrained habit."

The average iTunes video user played video files only 2.5 minutes per day during the fourth quarter of 2006 (95% of playback time was audio); about a third of iPod owners reported playing a video file.

Related Links:

http://tinyurl.com/22s7kd

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/business/16commercials.html

http://www.nielsen.com