[Article] TV Ads slump as viewers move to Netflix

serfboard

From this article in today's Indo:

The Irish Independent wrote:

TV advertising in Ireland is facing a shake-up after new figures show a 25pc drop in viewership of ads on Irish television.

The figures, contained in recent Television Audience Measurement (TAM) ratings from Nielsen, show sharpest viewership falls in the key advertising demographics of 15 to 34-year-olds and housekeepers with children.
...
A spokeswoman for TAM said Irish people may have switched viewing away from RTE, TV3 and other "measured" channels to "non-measured" channels.
...
Recent research from the Irish telecoms regulator Comreg shows that a majority of the estimated 150,000 new subscribers to Netflix have switched off scheduled television or lessened their viewing.

Makes you wonder why John Malone is after forking out nearly ninety million for TV3 - and that was almost 200 million less than the previous crowd had paid for it.

I'd be interested to see the effects this has on Cable TV (John Malone again) and Sky. Both have increasingly moved into broadband - I'm guessing for this reason.

I've got a Smart TV with which I watch Saorview and Netflix - no dish, no cable.

Have you become a "cord-cutter" recently? Will we eventually see a scenario where people will only watch through broadband?

Atlantic Dawn

They have brought a lot of this on themselves, if you look at RTÉ Player the ad slots they have are ridiculous and in some cases actually longer breaks than when the show was originally broadcast on TV, it only encourages people to use Ad Blocking software (when it worked) or other alternative sources.

ixoy

The only ads I see these days are in the cinema. I don't watch broadcast TV and the only recent ad from a TV show I recently watched was on 4oD.

I've completely severed the broadcast TV ads. I think the Netflix model is great. I'm not sure though that this will work on a bigger scale. Funding all of the TV shows from subs alone will be too expensive ultimately for the average viewer at home.

serfboard

ixoy wrote: »

I think the Netflix model is great. I'm not sure though that this will work on a bigger scale. Funding all of the TV shows from subs alone will be too expensive ultimately for the average viewer at home.

Yeah - I've wondered how long it will be before Netflix jacks up the price or starts introducing advertising? I wonder how they are funding their own-produced content now? Actually, I've just seen here that the CEO has said:

we think long-term debt is the best way for Netflix to finance the production of content

and they're just about to add another "$1.5 billion in additional long-term debt" to their existing "$900 million in long-term debt on its balance sheet".:O In fact:

Moody s and Standard & Poor s downgraded their credit ratings on the company, meaning the company s addition of debt carries more risk. "The downgrade and negative outlook reflects our expectation that Netflix will incur significant discretionary cash-flow deficits over the next several years and that debt leverage will be high during that time" S&P said Monday.

errlloyd

I didn't realise Netflix were taking such risks. They'd wanna work out how to make decent money off that in a hurry.

pickarooney

Moar product placement!