Viewers May Be Willing to Watch Lots More Ads Online

Viewers of television shows on the Web have grown accustomed to 15- and 30-second commercial breaks — a fraction of the time given for commercials on traditional TV. Would they accept TV-style ad loads? "It's a million-dollar question," said Jack Wakshlag, the chief research officer for Turner Broadcasting, the parent of TNT and TBS. He says the answer is yes. Research conducted by Turner suggested that programmers could surround the online streams of shows with even more ads than TV broadcasts have. Regardless of the ad load, Mr. Wakshlag said in an interview, "people will spend approximately the same amount of time watching episodes online." The research comes at a pivotal time for programmers like Turner, which would like to extend TV-style ad loads to the Internet. Turner and others are slowly extending their programs to the Internet for existing cable and satellite subscribers only, a concept sometimes called TV Everywhere. Heavier ad loads and restricted access will go a long way toward bringing TV on the computer in line with TV on the living room set.