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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."
But it's not the holy grail for advertising agencies and media companies, which have built an industry around the idea of getting a shallow message to a broad audience rather than a tailored message to a narrower one,"
So, let's see... Companies/organizations who sit between the producer and consumer, have made up their own rules and flimsy business model and don't like it when times change and require the business model to change. Where have I heard this before? *cough*RIAA*cough*
I know this isn't the same thing, I just saw the similarity. Oh, and I didn't see in the article, were the better ads replayed? They were during the Super Bowl.
Reality TV, news, and "event" programming such as the Oscars do significantly better at getting viewers to see the commercials.
PLEASE tell me this doesn't mean more Reality TV shows!!! I can't handle it!!! They're replacing the somewhat-good shows that have survived so far.
mention is when your commericial is cool enought that I watch it but I still can't remember what the heck your advertising.
+4 "funny!"
-2 "A feminine hygene product during the Superbowl is seriously OT!"
As long as it's statistical it will tell advertisers a lot. As the article mentions, it's not something the broadcasters want to hear. But if advertisers knew the best time to show ads, maybe we wouldn't get tampon ads during dinner.
Businessweek has an interesting article on a new TiVo technology which allows ad executives to see which ads are skipped on the DVRs.
Maybe this just means we won't have to sit through crappy commericials anymore because the companies can now figure out what the public (dis)likes. It's not like they're stealing your credit card numbers or anything...
Kudos to you, my good man.
One would think that 98% of the people who have DVRs would end up skipping all of the ads they've recorded. After all, that's half the purpose of getting a DVR in the first place, isn't it?
...I'll procrastinate tomorrow...
I really WISH the advertisers knew which ads I was skipping, and which ones make me rewind to see what exactly they were doing. There are some good ads out there that are hilarious - the first time I saw the "Stripperella" ads on TNN, for example, you'd better believe I backed the remote up. On the other hand, the guy with the polka-dotted suit needs to quit throwing his money away and get with the program....
What's your damage, Heather?
If it helps advertisers understand what ads people watch and why then you will get better ads. Better ads = more ads people will watch. More ads people will watch will result in higher quality ads, ones that might actually provide information that is useful to you or even somewhat entertaining.
This has to be better than the endless flood of mindless ads they shove at us now. As long as the information is only used in the aggregate, I see only positives from this.
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Does that mean we'll start seeing the equivalent of the "please click on my sponsor links" on TV shows?
Something like "If everyone watches all the commercials on the next three programs of Firefly, we'll keep it on the air." constantly running across the bottom of the screen.
And just when I thought the TV watching experience had hit absolute rock bottom...
That's my (and probably others') big pet peeve about them. Oh, they could be less frequent too. There is such a thing called advertisement overload, as where the unsuspecting consumer is so irritated by the advertisement, as where they lose interest in the ad itself, and goes of to take a leak (or to do something else useful, like grabbing a beer or something). Of course, the product doesn't get seen when that happens.
But will "they" learn? Probably not.
1. only have a 2-3 minute commercial break every 15 minutes.
2. don't ever show the same commercial twice during the same tv show commercial break (this is what annoys me the most).
How does this invade your privacy?
I am a TiVo owner. Are you suggesting that the fact that TiVo tells somebody that, say, 9.2% of TiVo owners watched a particular commercial is an invasion of my privacy?
I support this sort of data gathering. The less crappy, brainless advertising out there the better.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Check this out: they say that viewership is inversely proportional to ad watching, and then give an example of how few people watch a boring show like "The Weakest Link", but lots watch "The Practice" (though they skip the commmercials).
What that says is that bored people stay for the commercials. Interested people watch the show, and skip the commercials.
So that says that the TV shows need to be more boring. That's right, you're going to pay $60 per month for satellite TV, and at any time, you can watch such great shows as: Cooking World; Spatula City; Those Darn Mushroom Growers, and so on. 150 channels of it.
And you'll sit there, flipping from ad to ad, just absorbing information and boredom...
My advice? Sell the TV. Sell the TiVo. Buy a farm, it's a lot more exciting watching the hay mold.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
As many have pointed out.. what's important is not what ads are getting skipped, but why they are.
Here are a few things they have done wrong, that really piss off viewers:
1. Volume. The add should be no louder than the rest of the broadcast material. This should be a standard among all stations - if my tv is set at a specific volume, I should be able to go to any channel at any time and have it be *exactly* the same volume.
2. Timing of product. Tampon/pad commercials during dinner or sport events are probably not very well planned. Similarly, I've seen car/realestate commercials on during saturday morning cartoons...
3. Repeating ad. Ever watch a 30 minute show and see the *same* commercial 4 times (once before, twice during, once after). Or even 2 different commercials for the same product back to back? That gets annoying, and you blank it out.
4. Portrays customer as idiot. This may just be a pet peeve of mine, but it seems to be a fad now in advertising to portray customers as mindless automotons who just consume whatever you give them. For example, the guy in Best Buy staring mindlessly at the new TV, and the salesguy saying "dude, you need these speakers too."
Personally, I am amazed advertising has worked this far at all. We saw how HORRIBLY it failed at supporting websites. What if this (counting ad skips) is effectually the same as counting the lack of clicks on a banner? will advertising firms start to lose money, stop paying content providers for space, causing them to lose money?
no comment
The inverse relationship between rating and getting to show ads, and the variable stickiness, is no surprise at all if you watch what a Tivo user does. Here is what is happening, and it's so simple: Tivo gets to play the ad, if the user isn't paying attention. Tivo doesn't get to play ads, if the user is intently watching the show.
That's all there is to it. I play The Simpsons and it's some lame episode that I've already seen way too many times, so I get bored and surf Slashdot. Being a stupid monkey, I don't just stop The Simpsons and watch something else, because I like The Simpsons so I think I want to watch it. But nevertheless, since I've seen the episode too many times, I am bored. I just don't realize I'm bored. So I let the episode play. I'm not watching. A commercial break happens. I don't notice for a minute, because I'm in the midst of writing a troll that requires all my concentration. Then somewhere in the back of my head, I hear that someone is selling cars, and I wake up from my TrollTrance and look over at the TV outraged, screaming "Commercial!!! Kill! Kill! Kill!" and fast forward until I see The Simpsons again. Then I go back to writing my troll.
Now suppose I'm watching Futurama, and it's an episode that I somehow missed the first time around. I'm fascinated. Instead of making an ass of myself on the internet, I watch TV. I am paying attention and following along. When a commercial break happens, I automatically skip over it.
Back to the stats:
That's because 70% were actually watching the show while playing it. I've never seen it, but it sounds like it might be a good show; I should give it a try. The other 30% were bored and trolling Slashdot. That's because the bored Tivo user wasn't really watching the show. He's just using the TV to make reassuring background noise in his meaningless life. Tivo thinks he is "watching the ads" but really he is explaining to somebody, the finer points of pouring hot grits. The user is watching. The user is not watching.As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The article discusses how some live events and reality television have a larger percentage of watched ads. I would guess that would be because most people watch those shows when they're actually being broadcast, as opposed to watching them later. It would be more interesting to see statistics of what % of the commercials are watched when it was watched live versus what % people are watching when watching it previously recorded.
For the live/reality events, those are conversation pieces for some people at work the next day (*gasp* Did you see who the Bachelor picked?). I'd bet that those programs are watched live more, and therefore people are unable to skip the commercials.
Since I gotten my Tivo, I've noticed the rise of one trick that I see as a Tivo busting strategy. About a year ago, I noticed they started moving movie advertisements to the front of blocks of commercials a lot. The idea being, I think, that Tivo users are more likely to go back and watch a movie trailer, and once they are one commercial in, they'll probably just let the rest of the break play out. It worked on me for a little while. I'm curious if this is intentional, or if it is just movie advertising paying big money for preffered placement.
I hate the little dramas they try to play out as if we're supposed to believe we're seeing real people. I don't care if some damn, whiny bitch isn't feeling "fresh". Welcome to the world of evolution and genetics. You don't feel fresh. I lose my hair at age 40 and my refractory period has hit 2 weeks. Welcome to the Miserable Hearts Club. Now shut up about it.
Or the stupid jingles or the grating voiceovers. Everyone sounds like a used car salesman or a politician. Everybody in ad-land has happy nuclear familes in Whitebreadville, except for the Black targeted ads that are invariably accompanied by some sort of stereotypical blues jingle. I wanna see a Burger King commercial with Menace Klan's "Kill Whitey" in the background. Have a BK Fish, G, and tap some of that ass!
Or any alcohol ad. "You're all losers, so you need to dull your mind even further before you can have fun! May we suggest you consume large quantites of our cheap, watery beer. Oh, and drink responsibly! Wink! Wink!" Jackass, if I wanted to drink responsibly, I'd have a glass of orange juice. Wink wink at my spinchter, assface.
Whatever happened to those goddamned Mentos commercials? Mentos - breath mint of the master race. Christ, I don't even know what that meant! And if anyone actually smiled as wide as they do in toothpaste commercials, their brains would pop out. I guess it's a good thing that these dogfood grade morons with the idiot grins plastered on their botoxed lippage don't have brains in the first place.
And smoker's toothpolish. How dick is that? "Bob! You quit smoking!" says whore. "DID I?" says Bob. "Hmm, no. I guess not," says whore. "I can still smell the fetid stench of your filthy brain damaged habit wafting from your smoke encrusted clothing. Bleah. It's an extra $200 if you expect me to deal with your Marlboro funk."
Argh! Don't get me started on commercials!
--- Ban humanity.
It's more likely that the decent shows will be sponsored instead of saturated with ads. Firefly, brought to you by Preparation H!
When I read this, the idea of firefly presented by a hemmeroids ointment was so ridiculous, it made me laugh. But not, I realized, much more than regular product placement.
Advertising agencies have still got it all wrong. Why doesn't one of the characters on Friends, for instance, have a thing for coke? I know enough people in the real world who are adamantly "addicted" to certain brands and foods that it wouln't even stretch the imagination to see a TV character with that trait.
But instead they do horribly klutzy things like "the doritos picnic" on the original survivor, or the painfully akward Coke placement on American Idol. It's actually disarmingly honest; "hey look, we're a show you like and we're pushing a product, don't you want to BUY it??"
No. No we don't. We're over advertising as a social contract, where we tolerate it with the abiding satisfaction of receiving the accompanying content as a "reward." We no longer feel any obligation to this system. Advertising dollars spent on that very mechanism are terribly wasted, even if it works sometimes. Better to assign the desired buy-craziness to a TV character we can empathize with and desire to emulate. At least this will catch us off guard for a couple of years.
And which Linux solution actually works? Out of the box?