TIVO- ADVERTISER'S FRIEND OR FOE?

Three little letters changed the television future forever. DVR. With the advent of digital video recorders, a company named TiVo was born and so were advertiser's worst nightmares. TiVo is the original company that provided consumers with a way to record their favorite shows on live television and watch at their own convenience later. With this technology came the ability to fast-forward or just plain skip any advertisements and commercials that accompany said favorite show. For advertisers, this spelled disaster. It seemed TiVo would be the death of commercials and television advertising as we knew it. Until recently, this seemed to be the fate most advertisers had in mind. Now, TiVo has joined forces with Nielsen, whose audience ratings have been around since the sixties and are the basis for most ad sales within local television segments and markets. TiVo will now offer stations, advertisers and program producers year round, second-by-second information about the shows and commercials being watched by their consumers who own a TiVo DVR. In other words, the company who made it possible to skip ads is going to help companies sell them instead. So, what's the big deal? This is like Christmas for advertising companies. With this information from TiVo and Nielsen, companies will be able to know who is continuing to view their advertisements and when. According to Todd Juenger of Nielsen's research and measurement management team, "imagine a local news department that has to decide where to put sports and where to put weather and how much time to devote for each". The information provided by TiVo will do just that; provide advertisers with the who, what, and when their ads are being watched. Juegner states, "having second-by-second graphs that show when the audience goes up, goes away, or fast-forwards through a commercial or advertisement is a tremendous new piece of insight".



Check out what some other articles are saying about TiVo and their capabilities. Will the face of television advertising continue to change as DVR's get better, faster, and more innovative or will commercials forever remain in the lives of television audiences?



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/business/media/02ratings.html?pagewanted=all



http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_42/b3955118.htm



http://www.bigshinything.com/tivo-makes-friend-with-advertisers