MediaPost: Zenith's 2% 'Dilution' Evokes Bates' Landmark 5% Solution

Publicis's media department released a study showing that digital video recorders (DVRs) are reducing television ad viewing by two percent. That translates into about $1.2 billion of wasted ad spending by TV marketers. With 3.5 million U.S. television households time-shifting about two thirds of their viewing and skipping about three quarters of ads, it amounts to one in every fifty TV ads being thrown into the digital dustbin.

This has not stopped Publicis from continuing to pay higher and higher rates for more seldom viewed TV spots. Since 1990, the TV industry has doubled its revenues, and Publicis projects it will grow another 50 percent in the next eight years.