RSSTiVo cleverly converts commercial skipping into a commercial feature
By Sharon Fisher | Published July 1, 2008, 6:02 PM
While you're watching your TiVo, your TiVo is watching you -- not only what you watch, but what you skip.
Approximately everyone who has ever used one of TiVo Inc.'s digital video recorders has skipped over commercials. However, the devices also report, anonymously, every click of a remote back to the main offices, and track that aggregated information for clients of the company's Stop||Watch service, which it has offered since 2006. This from Todd Juenger, Vice President & General Manager, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement, in an interview with BetaNews.
This information can prove valuable to ad agencies and networks. "$70 billion in ad money is spent on television," he told us. "There's a lot of money at risk for fast forwarding."
The Alviso, Calif., company samples 20,000 of its 4 million viewers every night (less than 1 percent opt out of reporting back), then lets its clients know which programs people are watching in real time, which programs they're watching later (known as "timeshifting"), and which commercials are being watched -- and skipped over. And sometimes the results are significantly different between the live and timeshifting groups, Juenger said. He noted, for example, that while ABC's Grey's Anatomy had the top four timeshifted episodes, only one of its commercials was in the Top 10, but that while House didn't have any episodes in Top 10 timeshifted viewing, it included four of the top timeshifted commercials.
Positioning within a "pod," or group, of commercials is also a factor, Juenger said. For example, the first and last commercials in a group are most likely to be watched, at least partially, as people leap for the remote. This helps networks quantify how much higher to price such spots. Similarly, the most popular commercial for both live and timeshifted viewers was just before the announcement of the winner of Fox's American Idol.
Okay, enough of the background. What you really want to know is, what do people watch? Well, for live broadcasts in May, seven of the top 10 commercial spots were during the American Idol finale on May 21 - including Coca-Cola, the movie The Love Guru, Guitar Hero, Ford Focus, and iTunes. Most-watched commercials during other programs were for Dove Body Wash (Desperate Housewives), the Sex and the City movie, and Pizza Hut (Grey's Anatomy). But those are the commercials people kind of had to watch. How about the people who timeshifted and recorded their programs to watch later, who could fast-forward through commercials? What commercials did they see most?
Well, four of them were also during that same American Idol finale: Coca-Cola, Guitar Hero, and The Love Guru. And several others were also the same: Dove Body Wash during Desperate Housewives, and Sex and the City during Grey's Anatomy. What's interesting is that four of the most-watched commercials were during various episodes of Fox's House: the movies You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Sex and the City, and The Incredible Hulk, plus the American Express card.
Subscribers to TiVo's Stop||Watch service include: Omnicom Media Group, NBC Universal, CBS Corporation, The Interpublic Group, Starcom, Carat USA, MPMA, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Media IQ, and Euro RSCG New York. Juenger would not say how much the companies pay for the service, nor how much TiVo earns from the service in general. "It is a strategic platform for TiVo's business," he told BetaNews. "We intend to make it an important part of growth going forward."
If a sponsor wants people to watch their commercials, having the same one shown 5 or 6 times within the same hour program isn't the way to get us to do it. THAT inspires me to grab that FF button & push it w/ all my might.
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|Why do people still use TiVo? Have you even looked at Windows Media Center? It is a better Tivo than TiVo!!
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|And how do you propose to get HBO, Showtime, wealth of other Digital tv stations, pay per view, and on demand using a over the air HD tuner on WMC? Not to mention all the encrypted HD you can get off a cable card using Tivo or other DVR. Tivo also allows you to transfer all those encrypted HDTV programs to a PC for archiving or converting. Something other DVRs don't do, along with WMC and a crappy un-encryptable HD tuner card.
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|WMC is great and all, but it's damn expensive for a good PC that's quiet like a TiVo.
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|You can, it's all in their FAQ.
But as the person above mentions, cost starts blowing out and its quite limited hardware wise. Need to do a whole lot of verification.
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|As stated in the article, this is nothing new. It helps companies figure out what commercials people will actually sit through willingly. Supposedly movie commercials go over the best with DVR users.
Not a huge privacy invasion. It reports on what you don't care about and what it does report in as being "watched" may not necessarily have actually received your attention.
It takes big money to generate the TV content that you consume. It's the advertisements that pay the bills for the networks. Sure they make a profit, but if they didn't there would be no incentive to produce content. The alternative would be a pay per channel approach like the premium channels.
What people often forget is that the advertising dollars brought in by a program keep it on the air. If you enjoy the program, then letting the ads roll gives it a boost given that you're monitored by a device like TiVo.
Note: I'm not involved with the TV industry and do run auto commercial skipping on my Media Center PC. Just trying to get people to consider both sides.
Also, of course premium channels cross-promote their own programming! That's how you let viewers know what is coming. Also, they are used to fill time in a schedule slot so that you don't end up with bizarre start times.
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|Even the premium channel ( not "on demand" channels ) have commercials.
Take Disney it does not have any commercials per say but they advertise their own stuff every 5 minutes.
I am again talking about "Disney Channel" other Disney channels might not even do that but advertise for shows which is ok.
The same can be said for HBO and other premium channels.
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|Every minute we are closer to 1984! Damn, the only thing missing is the Big Brother telling what to do from the TV... And Orwell rolls in his grave...
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|i am glad i use windows media center
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|uh...good for you?
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|Windows Media Center lets you edit out all commercials with a single click before you watch a recorded movie so you don't have to skip through them.
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|Cool...too bad you can't record any encrypted channels (HBO, SHO, etc...).
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|Until Cable Card becomes more widely available for computers I'm sure it's possible to use a cable box.
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|TV hasn't been worth the investment since about 2000? That people PAY MONEY to watch COMMERCIALS astounds me continually.
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|Thus the wonders of the BBC in the UK.
We pay to *not* have commercials.
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|I don't think anybody pays money to watch commercials...actually, commercials make it so you DON'T have to pay money to watch TV. TV is actually free (local channels at least)...just snag the signal out of the air with an antenna. You DO pay for TV that has no commercials...like HBO/TMC etc...no commercials, and unlike regular TV, it's not free.
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|I'm talking about your standard cable or sat service. I would love to pay for only HBO or a single channel or two. But I refuse on principal to pay $60+ for 99% crap.
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|That's the way cable TV started in the US. It was a subscription-based service so you paid to "not have commercials."
It was great for a number of years. Then they started sneaking them in slowly but surely and it has returned to the commercial-saturated wasteland again.
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