My wife and I have two TiVos and I am cobbling together a Vista Ultimate box to serve as an OTA receiver in our guest room and as a server (using TiVo Desktop) for the two TiVo boxes.
All of that makes me wonder: How are political ads doing on TV? Personally, I only watch live TV if it’s a weekday morning and I’m catching the weather and traffic or if I’m watching a major news story (the only live radio I listen to is the local NPR affiliate for news and traffic during the morning and evening commutes, by the way).
I use numerous RSS feeds to keep an eye on the news and have, for the most part, turned completely away from traditional TV news for information (unless you count The Daily Show, but it’s not a truly in-depth news show as we are all very aware).
So, since I rely on very little real-time broadcasting, and choose to fast-forward through commericals when I’m watching recorded TV, I started to wonder:
How many of us are completely missing the ads these campaigns spend millions of dollars on during each election cycle? Are we less likely to react to negative attacks since we don’t see them? Are we more likely to be educated voters because we are searching out the news as opposed to passively observing it? As we see the DVR move into more and more households are we beginning to see the end of the traditional campaign ad?
I’ve found that the Obama campaign, more than any other in the present or past, is advertising all over the sites I visit. And I’m not just talking about CNN and NYT or other mainstream news sites – I’m talking about places like Ars Technica. They seem to get that, while the larger population still can be reached by mainstream television ads, those of us who are eschewing TV ads can be found on the net itself. McCain’s campign has been remarkably absent in this regard (not surprising considering how poorly that campaign is being run).
Are TV campaign ads dead in the era of DVRs?
My wife and I have two TiVos and I am cobbling together a Vista Ultimate box to serve as an OTA receiver in our guest room and as a server (using TiVo Desktop) for the two TiVo boxes.
All of that makes me wonder: How are political ads doing on TV? Personally, I only watch live TV if it’s a weekday morning and I’m catching the weather and traffic or if I’m watching a major news story (the only live radio I listen to is the local NPR affiliate for news and traffic during the morning and evening commutes, by the way).
I use numerous RSS feeds to keep an eye on the news and have, for the most part, turned completely away from traditional TV news for information (unless you count The Daily Show, but it’s not a truly in-depth news show as we are all very aware).
So, since I rely on very little real-time broadcasting, and choose to fast-forward through commericals when I’m watching recorded TV, I started to wonder:
How many of us are completely missing the ads these campaigns spend millions of dollars on during each election cycle? Are we less likely to react to negative attacks since we don’t see them? Are we more likely to be educated voters because we are searching out the news as opposed to passively observing it? As we see the DVR move into more and more households are we beginning to see the end of the traditional campaign ad?
I’ve found that the Obama campaign, more than any other in the present or past, is advertising all over the sites I visit. And I’m not just talking about CNN and NYT or other mainstream news sites – I’m talking about places like Ars Technica. They seem to get that, while the larger population still can be reached by mainstream television ads, those of us who are eschewing TV ads can be found on the net itself. McCain’s campign has been remarkably absent in this regard (not surprising considering how poorly that campaign is being run).
This could be an interesting study.