TV viewers are voting with their remotes after a 50-year advertising assault, thanks to the introduction of powerful personal video recorders now flooding the market.
The advent of PVRs - hard-drive recorders that take advantage of digital TV signals to pause, rewind and store live TV - is forcing advertisers to reassess what was once considered their most trusted and potent medium.
More than 240,000 Australian homes boast set-top PVRs, with a further million using DVD recorders with the same ad-skipping capacity.
Research company GFK reports that in the lead-up to Christmas more than 5000 PVRs were sold.
Foxtel is boasting increasing interest in its IQ set-top box that allows viewers to fast forward through commercials. Last month the pay-TV broadcaster said more than 120,000 IQs were in Australian homes.
Although the impact of ad-skipping technology has been hotly debated in TV and advertising circles since the launch of Tivo (a set-top PVR) in the US eight years ago, the technology is only just beginning to take hold in Australia.
A revised report by the London Business School into the impact of PVRs on advertising released last month made sobering reading for advertisers and TV networks.
According to the researchers 71 per cent of PVR owners fast-forwarded commercials while watching TV.
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