Discrimination Vs. Avoidance: “Zipping” of Television Commercials

Abstract One of the more pressing problems facing television advertisers today is zipping: fast-forwarding by viewers through commercials when playing a pre-recorded or rented videotape. This paper presents the results of laboratory and field investigations to assess whether viewers evaluate commercials prior to zipping them. High levels of zipping were found, reducing the audience size for commercials well below that for the programs. Block zipping, in which two or more commercials were zipped at a time, was discovered to be a predominant mode of zipping behavior. Zipping rates were lowest for the first commercial in the first pod, and highest for the commercials in the last pod. The authors conclude that a majority of subjects zipped to indiscriminately avoid all commercials and that few attempted to evaluate commercials prior to zipping them.