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TiVo Data Collection Ramifications
www.sharkdefense.com writes "Businessweek has an interesting article on a new TiVo technology which allows ad executives to see which ads are skipped on the DVRs. Thank goodness they still don't know if you went to the bathroom for a break or to the fridge. The article is an eye-opening read."
How do Neilsen (sp?) ratings work?
I thought the data for the neilsen ratings was gathered from set top boxes distributed by the neilsen company.
90% of commercials are so annoying the prevent me from buying a product. There are products I haven't bought for years because of annoying commercials. 8% of commercials have no impact on my buying habits, and then there's the last 2% which I like and increase the chances I will buy the product.
If monitoring which commercials people skip causes companies to produce better and more entertaining ads, I'm all for it.
Jason
ProfQuotes
that if someone were going to skip over commercials, they'd just blindly skip over all of them, not pick and choose which they wanted to see. You're either in the mood to deal with commercials, or you just skip the lot of them.
Is this not the case?
How else are they supposed to make sure you can hear it from the bathroom?
From the plaintiff's filing in Paramount vs. SonicBlue:
So there.
A smaller percentage of a large number is often more actual people than a large percentage of a small number of people.
In other words, would you rather your ad be seen by 5% of 1,000,000 people, or 75% of 500 people?
To use the numbers from the article, The Practice had 8.9% of viewers, and they watched 30% of the ads. That's 2.67% of viewers. The Weakest Link viewers, being 0.9% of viewers, would have to record commercials and watch them three times each to match that.
This means I almost always see the first couple of seconds of the first ad, and if it is interesting, I'll watch it.
Same goes for the last ad in the block...I'll see the end of it, and if the end is very interesting, I'll back up and watch.
So, to reach me, the best shot the advertisers have is at the ends of commercial blocks. An ad in the middle only has a chance if it is so interesting that in the time it it takes me to recognize it is not the show as I skip past, I'll be grabbed, or if the ad next to it is interesting enough that I decide to watch that neighbor ad, and while skipping to the start of that, the other ad catches me.
That gives these rules for ads if you want the PVR crowd to see them:
The first ad in the block needs be interesting from the beginning.
The last ad in the block needs to end in a way that will be interesting to people who haven't seen the begining of the ad.
The value of interior spots depends on what is around them.
A clever advertiser could use this to try to get people to skip the following ads, which might make it more likely the consumer will remember their ad. For example, instead of spending all 30 seconds on your product, do a 20 second interesting ad, and a 10 second boring ad or public service announcement or something--the idea is to give people some time to start skipping before some other company's ad can start. If the only ad people see during a break is yours, you've won.
"On April 11, 2002, ABC's popular TV drama The Practice drew a TiVo rating of 8.9, meaning 8.9% of TiVo owners watched the show live or recorded it and watched it later. But those viewers watched just 30% of the ads shown. Meanwhile, quiz show The Weakest Link, drew a rating of 0.9, but viewers watched 78% of the commercials. TV news magazine 60 Minutes got only a 2.2 rating, but its viewers sat through 73% of the ads."
Even though the percentage of ads skipped increases with the popularity of the show, the popular shows still get more ads played through overall.
With the 8.9 show above, 30% of that show's viewers played the ads, which means those ads were played through by 30% of 8.9% = 2.67% of viewers. With the 0.9 show, 78% of its viewers played the ads, and 78% of 0.9% = 0.702% overall. So the ads that air with the most popular shows still get the most eyeballs, despite the inverse relationship mentioned in the article.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Mod this up. There's a reason why AdCritic, the website that had a massive database of movieclips of commercials for free went under, and resurfaced as a subscription service. Its not because they weren't popular enough to make ends meet. Its because they were TOO popular, and couldn't afford the bandwidth/server space. People do want to see ads, just good creative ones.
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Here's an Everything2 writeup about this joke.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".