Report: Apple to offer viewer option to pay to skip commercials


Jessica Lessin:

In recent discussions, Apple told media executives it wants to offer a "premium" version of the service that would allow users to skip ads and would compensate television networks for the lost revenue, according to people briefed on the conversations.

The big problem with this model is that the people who are willing to pay to skip ads are exactly who advertisers want to target. Remove them from the equation and TV ad time gets much less valuable. Can these fees compensate for advertisers who smartly would want cheaper rates? Would networks allow this system to work all the time, or will consumers have to suffer through commercials during primetime? Would consumers even consider paying for this vs just hitting the fast forward button on the DVR?

This would obviously be pretty disruptive, but I'm not sure how this would be to the benefit of either advertisers or TV distributors/producers.