Consumer's ability to skip ads
Description:
Advertisements are annoying and often intrusive. Given the chance, users would prefer to skip ads on TV and in general not be exposed to so much advertising in their day-to-day lives. This is clear from the number of users running pop-up killers on their computers or using hacks on their TiVo boxes to avoid advertisements. As technology advances and the users gain more flexibility, they will also be more able to skip advertisements.
Enablers:
o Technology growth: With the growth of various technologies such as media-on-demand and TiVo, users have much greater control over the content they view. The Internet is a big part of this enabler.
o Growth of media types: Viewers are not restricted to one device for a certain type of media. For example viewers no longer are restricted to television for watching their favourite shows. This offers greater flexibility and again control on the side of the viewer.
o Consumer power/flexibility: Consumers have more power over the media than they did in the past, and hence can exercise this power to reduce the amount of advertising they are exposed to.
Inhibitors:
o Enforcement of advertisements on viewers. For example viewers who skip ads using TiVo are subject to still-image advertisements while they fast-forward through the video ads. One would imagine that similar methods will most likely be conceived for VOD advertising in the future. Perhaps the forced display of advertisements before letting the user view his chosen video.
Paradigms:
No longer are advertisements ubiquitous and forced on the population. Instead, people have tremendous flexibility in terms of what content they view and what advertisements they allow to be shown to them. Furthermore, due to more privacy and legal issues in contemporary Internet advertising, dubious methods such as spam and popups will most likely be outlawed.
Experts:
Timing:
There are already many technologies and media types through which users can bypass advertisements. As time goes on, users will continually seek the technologies that give them the most flexibility in terms of content (often also with regard to avoiding advertisements).