DVRs and TiVo record TV shows, allowing viewers to fast-forward through commercials. There has been a fear that this would spell doom to TV advertising.

But, for starters, the study found that 95 percent of viewers still watch TV live. Secondly, those who do fast-forward through commercials still watch the screen to see where the show re-starts, so they are exposed to advertisers’ messages.

The investigators found no difference in shopping habits between groups of study participants with TiVos and those without.

The study also found that people are watching more TV because they can record shows.

“While the absolute amount of duplicate viewing that currently takes place via the Internet and various devices such as digital video recorders and video-on-demand services currently is small, it is expected to grow over time, and potentially could dilute the meaning of audience reach,” the report says.

“It’s unlikely that any repeated program content viewing will deliver repeated commercial viewing,” Don Seaman, vice president-director of communications analysis at MPG, told Media News Daily. “Once again, the metric is favoring the content providers and probably overstating what the actual commercial impact really is.”

Nielsen spokesman Gary Holmes said it’s much ado about practically nothing. “The estimate is that it will increase viewing under 1 percent,” he said. That figure is the amount Nielsen estimates the inclusion of duplicate viewing done via DVRs will have on the absolute size of average audience ratings. The impact of viewing TV programs online currently is negligible.

In another move drawing fire, Nielsen is eliminating overnight access to its live-only local TV program ratings, which covers around 70 percent of local U.S. television homes. “For the better part of 50 years, advertisers have used live-only as their currency,” Media Daily News says. “In the last few years, Nielsen has added new streams of program data to account for time-shifting. But few, if any, advertisers made deals on these other metrics.”

“Ad spending in 2009 came in at $125.3 billion, a drop of 12.3 percent compared to the prior year,” the report says, according to Crain’s New York Business.

“The good news was that fourth-quarter ad spending fell by only 6 percent. In addition, preliminary numbers for the first quarter of 2010 show most media categories doing better than they were a year ago, said Jon Swallen, a senior vice president at Kantar Media.”

This is worse than a previous report from Medill Reports that said overall U.S. advertising spending was down 9 percent for the year last year. (Kantar isn’t limiting its number to the U.S., perhaps.)

According to Kantar Media, “radio fell 20.3 percent, local television plunged 23.7 percent, magazines dropped 17.4 percent and newspapers 19.7 percent.” Network television was down 7.6 percent for the year but turned around in the fourth quarter to rise 4.1 percent. Cable TV was  down just 1.4 percent.

Internet display advertising rose 7.3 percent.

“The biggest turnaround may be taking place among newspapers,” Crain’s says. “According to Mr. Swallen, advertising is flat so far this year, which puts the category on track to record its best quarter in two-and-a-half years.”

The test used technology developed by Invidi to deliver “different ads within the same cable network commercial breaks to different household groupings, based on segmentation data provided by data-management firm Experian,” the report says. Viewers fast-forwarded through 32 percent fewer commercials.

“It was 65 percent more efficient to buy an addressable spot to reach the advertiser’s true audience, even factoring into the calculation a premium for the seller,” said Michael Kubin, an executive vice president with Invidi. And that efficiency, he said, “on a national basis creates billions of dollars in the TV marketplace per year.”

Kubin said this second test of the system proves it works and indicates that the next step is to bring it to the marketplace.

Chuck Ross of TV Week calls the test results “nothing short of phenomenal” and his headline writer calls the test a “game changer.”

Nielsen’s new methodology to compile data that take into account viewing of commercials that run in a particular show, online or off, could be in place by September so it can be used for ad sales in February 2011.  “If this system were adopted en masse — and it’s not clear that it would be — online viewing might be crammed just as full of commercials as the more traditional TV-watching experience,” Ad Age says.

And, while online sites like Hulu and Disney’s ABC.com typically have few ads, “many TV executives say these methods don’t bring much, if any, profit — and therefore cannot continue.”

The half-hour-plus included 66 ads run by 41 different marketers (excluding NFL “house” ads), according to Kantar Media. On top of that was about eight-and-a-half minutes of CBS promos — also about 90 seconds more than 2009.

The game itself was 30 minutes shorter than in 2009, the report says.

In addition to the record number of commercials, the viewership numbering 106.5 million beat the 27-year-old record held by the final episode of “M*A*S*H,” and there were many records set during the sporting competition itself, as anyone who watched the CBS broadcast can surely tell you.

Also, “Multiple analyses were issued Monday about which ads were the most popular. … [V]otes cast via Twitter and Facebook … found that a Snickers spot with Betty White topped the charts, while one for Google about finding love in Paris was second,” Media Daily News says.

Most will go to broadcast TV with 61 percent, or $2.6 billion, Editor & Publisher’s reading of the report says, followed by cable TV at a very distant second with a 9.1 percent share. Only 1 percent, or $45 million, of political dollars is expected to be spent on Internet ads — 73 percent more than in 2008.

“Last year was relatively quiet on the political front, yet spending outpaced 2000 levels,” E&P says. “The recent Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations to now spend on politics caused Borrell analysts to bump up its forecast 10 percent.”

The Fitz & Jen blog charts the numbers for each medium.

The first six dispensaries have to be nonprofits, which is expected to keep prices down, but then commercial concerns can get in on the trade. ” I can very well envision commercials, much like for Levitra or Claritin, on the airways,” said State Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton), who co-sponsored the bill to legalize medical marijuana.

“Lou Stancampiano, VP at The Jersey Journal, said there is potential for newspaper revenue from the category ‘if it moves into distribution of traditional promoters, like chain pharmacies, people who have a tendency to promote.’” Stancampiano added that hospitals are trdaitionally big newspaper advertisers, and specifically named Jersey City Medical Center as a potential medical marijuana distributor.

Said Jim Rothenberg, executive VP-creative director for D&R Advertising in Fort Lee, “What media they’ll get into, I’m not sure, but I am sure there will be some wonderful creative done.”

Cablevision ran the trial with ads from Gillette, Benjamin Moore, retailer Century 21, Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive Co. and its 3.1 million subscribers in the New York, Connecticut and New Jersey area.

“Responses were strong enough that the campaigns were taken off the air after an average of half their scheduled runs after advertisers were caught low on promotional inventory, according to Cablevision and marketers,” Ad Age says.

“The campaigns’ results suggest that TV can in fact deliver Web-like metrics and interactive opportunities — and that consumers are willing to use their TVs like computers.”

In fact, print ads are more than twice as effective as television for large clothing stores, big grocery retailers, fashion retailers and department stores, Microsoft Advertising concluded.

The anonymous study participants included 24 of the top 100 UK companies in terms of media spending.

“The study recommended retailers increased online and print advertising budgets by 10 percent and decreased television budgets by that amount,” the newspaper said.