ADVERTISEMENTS that impart information at the blink of an eye are being developed for a new generation of fast-forward viewers.

The “intelligent” adverts will leave the imprint of a product with viewers, even if they are using digital video recorders to speed through advertising breaks at 30-times normal speed.

Advertisers are adapting to a revolution in viewing habits that started with the arrival of personal video recorder technology (PVR).

Using PVR, viewers can “time-shift” programming, pause live television and will eventually be able store up to 100 hours of material on a hard disk. They are already able to speed through commercial breaks in six seconds.

Households with PVRs — 400,000 families in the United Kingdom have signed up in the past year — are more likely to “time-shift” programmes.

Research from the media agency Mindshare suggests that audiences skip between 65 per cent and 90 per cent of adverts during time-shifted viewing. It calculates that this could signal a 14.4 per cent decline in television advertising value, a loss of £460 million at last year’s prices.

Steve Scott, the managing director of Mindhouse, a London company that develops interactive television services, said: “American researchers are developing adverts which still impart a message at times-30 speed. The adverts incorporate stable images which still stand out at that speed. The question is how to incorporate them into adverts which some viewers are still watching at normal speed?”

There will also be experiments with more frequent but shorter breaks each hour.

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