Mobile DTV prospects improve: people remember commercials (plus: video of actual Mobile DTV receivers)

OK, who doesn't love their TiVo or other Digital Video Recorder (DVR) that allows them to skip past all the commercials.  Or watching online? When you can go do something else until the commercial is over? One of the greatest inventions besides the television, right?  All it takes is a huge hard disk drive to store up all your favorite TV shows and let you skip forward and back through them.

Well, digital video recorders are great inventions unless you're an advertiser who wants you to watch their commercials or you run a TV station that relies on the money from those (increasingly less-effective) advertisements.

Now comes Mobile DTV, which is designed to go into a small package that operates from a battery like the Samsung Moment below.

It has a receiver, it has a screen, it has an antenna and a channel selector. But it doesn't have a giant hard drive, and, therefore, it doesn't let you skip the commercials or record your programs for later.  Mobile DTV is, at this point, back-to-the-50s TV that runs program in specified time slots and if you miss it you miss it. And if you want to watch, you have to watch the commercials, too.

Which is, I suspect, why advertisements on Mobile DTV devices are so effective, according to this article by Joe Mandese from Media Daily News. The article says the TV Bureau of Advertising ran several public service announcement commercials during the DTV Showcase in Washington DC.  Commercials were shown as 30-second anti-drunk driving PSAs, along with banner ads on the channel selection page and during the few seconds of dead air while the channel changes.

And the exciting news from this test is... PEOPLE REMEMBER SEEING THE ADVERTISEMENTS! Which is a really big deal if you are buying or selling advertising.

Recall of anti-drunk driving advertising by mobile phone users in the Showcase more than doubled, from 15% prior to the launch of the campaign to 34% post-campaign. 

The majority of users who recalled seeing the ads saw them while they were out of home (69%). 

A large number also recalled that they'd seen the ads when away from their homes.  According to the article, here's what this all means for Mobile DTV:

Abby Auerbach -- the executive vice president and CMO of the TVB, who oversaw the bureau's participation in the project -- said that the fact that more than two-thirds of viewers said they saw the spots while they were out-of-home was especially encouraging for advertisers and local TV broadcasters, because it means mobile may actually extend the reach of local television to places and at times when viewers aren't otherwise able to watch it. In essence, she said, the digital platform is a net positive for local broadcasters and advertisers, not a negative.

She said more research needs to be done on when, where and how consumers utilize mobile digital TV, but that the initial finds are very encouraging for the broadcast TV industry, which is working with the OMVC to try to convince consumer electronics manufacturers -- especially cell phone, smartphone and hand-held computing device manufacturers -- to install special chips and receivers into their devices that will enable the mass market to access digital mobile TV signals.

Some of the people who were watching those ads were were using a Samsung Moment smartphone that was specially equipped to receive the signals.  Here's a YouTube YouTube video from Samsung that shows the Moment in use.  Most interesting to me is the external antenna.