Slashdot Mirror
Nielsen to measure TiVo usage
ny_cable_guy writes "The following letter went out to all of Nielsen's clients this morning: 'Working together, Nielsen Media Research and TiVo have developed software that will enable the extraction of tuning, recording and playback information from TiVo's PVR system. TiVo has downloaded this new software as part of a normal system upgrade via phone lines to existing TiVo subscribers across the country. This software would be used only by Nielsen Media Research to retrieve data from sample households, and only with permission from the household, as is the case with all homes in our samples. It is otherwise inactive in non-Nielsen homes.' The full letter has been reprinted here on netWert."
Hah! I just scoured the Tvio forums for the reason why my Tivo (and a few others) oddly locked up Saturday night. I guess this explains it...
------
Today's Top Deals
I'm surprised it has taken this long. Letting the studios and networks know what shows I watch and what shows I pass over will hopefully steer them towards more shows that I like.
-- Erv Walter
I've always wondered why they don't ask for participatory commercial effectiveness voting. The Tivo would be an ideal device for this type of system. It would work like this:
When a commercial comes on, the viewer(s) are allowed to rate it on something like a 1 - 10 system. The results could be compiled and bad commercials could be automatically blocked (as a viewer preference) while good commercials could be compiled on the Tivo's drive and watched in a manner that the late adcritic.com had assembled.
I *watch* the Superbowl for the commercials. If this kind of system was implemented and widespread, commercials would become more effective and entertaining (or even informative). As a sidenote, it'd be cool if slashdot did something similar. I'm hesitant to mod down a post that I might disagree with even though I still might find it interesting. I.E. - INTERESTING+1, DISAGREE+1.
The world could be a better place, eh?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Honestly, how many times has a show been cancelled and you've wished to yourself, "Man, I wish I had a Neisen box so those network bastards would know what I really like?"
This seems like a great opt-in opportunity to democratize the airwaves, as it were. Neilsen gets a bigger market sample to forecast with, ratings become more accurate (at least for the tech-savvy, tivo-owning demographic), and we get more input into the shows we like - more than "boycott this sponsor!" or a half-assed writein campaign.
Hell, if it meant I could opt-in, Neilsen or not, I'd buy a Tivo. You betcha.
GMFTatsujin
So, what possible use could the Nielsons have for this data, since it's precisely the demographic that ignores advertisers?
John
Why else would you own one of these machines?
I own the machine for a variety of reasons. Not watching commercials is not why I ran out to purcahse one. Personally I travel a great deal. When I do get home, I like to be able to watch the TV shows I missed while I was gone. Sure I could that with a VCR, but it would be a pain. (of course the VCR also lets me skip commercials, but its not why I bought it a long time ago.) TiVo makes it simple to do that. When I'm home on Thursday night and Friends is coming on, I don't wait for it to be over. I watch it live. Most people are not going to waste 30 minutes of their life so that they can watch 20 minutes of TV by skipping commericals.
If TV show producers would make shows so interesting to watch that I would always want to see it ASAP (aka Live), then I wouldn't have an oppertunity to skip commericals.
Its not as if Nielson is going to base ALL of their statistical data on the TiVo's viewer's habits. The percentage of TiVo viewers is very small. However, we are real people and so it simply broadens their sample with little effort on their part.
I have to post as an AC because I am a member of one of A.C. Neilson's "panels", but not the one for TV ratings. They have been excellent at keeping my information private. I have never received any unwanted solicitation that could be traced back to my participation with them.
The way compensation works on the consumer panel (scan barcodes on what you buy and transmit once per week with acoustic coupler on scanner, also answer occasional surveys) is that you are awarded points for transmitting information. If you transmit four weeks in a month you get a "Super Scanner" bonus. The points for each week and "Super Scanner" go up if you've been with them longer. Also you get points for surveys.
The points are then used to "purchase" gifts from a catalogue. You scan the barcodes like a survey and in a couple of weeks your gift arrives. I've received about $1000 worth of stuff over the past 10 years and I still have a large number of unused points waiting to build up for a larger ticket item. The items change. Some of the nicer large ticket items include a small tv/vcr combo and a nice astronomical telescope (which I got for my kids).
I think product placement will be the future of advertising for television. It already is a big staple of it (how often do you see a TV char using an Apple?).
I am willing to be that the future of web advertising might make better use of product placement than it generally does now as we see pop-ups phased out (like iVillage and AOL seem to be leabing toward).
AOL has already started with their IM that pops up a user portal by default when you open up your IM interface, at least on Mac and Windows. You get some mindless junk to click around on, but notice that Time Warner gets to push a lot of their latest entertainment content that way.
The billions we've payed isn't enough?
Marketing/advertising is a flawed idea, that has outlived its usefulness in human civilization.
Not that that will stop it. You ask who "will pay for" questions, never stopping to realize how much money is wasted on it. Those doing the wasting don't seem to mind, so who cares, right?
There are better ways, more efficient ways, for customers to find what they want/need, that isn't the social equivalent of carpet-bombing. These ways don't use barely ethical psychological tricks to persuade people to buy. Sure, some companies would go under, the ones that don't have a product truly worth buying... will that be so sad?
When it's all said and done, I expect to pay something for my TV viewing, but I don't want ads crammed down my throat. I don't have to read a page of advertising for every 10 I read in a novel (though I hope I don't give any ambitious little cockraoches any ideas).