The Impact of Time Shifting on TV Consumption and Ad Viewership
通过现场实验发现，时间平移功能增加了总电视消费量，但未改变直播收视率，且观众并未利用该功能刻意跳过广告。
In this paper we study the impact of time shifting on TV consumption and ad viewership. We analyze the results of a field experiment in which a random sample of “triple-play” households were given a set of premium TV channels broadcasting popular movies and TV shows without commercial breaks. A random subset of these households were given access to these channels with time shifting (automated cloud recording for later viewing or rewinding of broadcasted programs), while the remainder were not. This design allowed us to identify the effects of time shifting on TV consumption. On average, we found that receiving access to the channels with time shifting increased total TV consumption because it increased time-shifted viewership while leaving live viewership unchanged. The increase in the live viewership of these channels was similar to the reduction in the live viewership of the originally available channels, resulting in a net zero effect on live viewership. It appears that time shifting does not change the concentration of live viewership, but it does increase the concentration of total TV viewership, because it is used disproportionately to watch the most popular programs. Finally, we found that time shifting does not change the likelihood of skipping ads during live viewership, suggesting that households do not use time shifting to strategically avoid ads. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3084 . This paper was accepted by Matthew Shum, marketing.