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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."
if the Ad companies that save/make money off of this technology paid for my monthly service fee.
Sure you skip all of them but the question is which ones do you rewind to watch. I have noticed that hot chicks tend to do the trick for me.:) And movies commericials. Of course movies are one of the few products out there where the commericials actually tell you something usefull about the product rather than trying to convince you that buying a product will make you a cooler person.
How do Neilsen (sp?) ratings work? I know that I generally change the channel during boring commercials, and I bet a lot of other people do, also. Does the TiVo have picture in picture? If it does, wouldn't that make it seem as though the person was watching the commercials while in reality watching something else? Or does it ignore the smaller picture?
So, how can the ad executives determine if you're skipping the commercial because it sucks or because you've already seen it before?
Heaven forbid they'll find out that on TV nobody actually pays attention to the commercials either. That all this spending on advertising was all in vain anyway. That they had been better off not sacking their crunchies but save on advertising throwaways instead. That it's merely visual and auditory pollution. That people just find it annoying. Surely that couldn't be the case. The horror!
In the UK theres a strange phenomenon in TV ad viewing, that is the "cup of Tea". On UK TV ad breaks tend to be longer and less frequent. UK dwellers also tend to drink alot of tea during the evening, and making a cup of tea takes about the same time as an ad break. For example during the half time break in the soap opera "Coronation Street" the load on the National Grid goes up something like double as 15 million viewers get off the couch and turn on their electric kettles.
So in essense this activity means that alot less viewers are actually present during the ad breaks than in the US when watching live TV. So what's the solution: Make ads that people actually want to see. British ads on the whole are funnier and more episodic than their US counterparts. I've never heard anyone in my time in the US talk about "The new ad for Coke" around the water cooler at work, but in the UK this regularly happens for the soft drink "Tango" for example.
So perhaps the answer is to make ads more entertaining, less repeated (why oh why show the same ad twice in an ad break), and less formulaic. If US ad agencies showed half the imagination that the UK ad agencies showed then people might actually be less tempted to skip over the ads or leave the room.
Actually, I've noticed that trailers seem to be getting less and less descriptive. One of the ads for Terminator 3 that I watched told absolutely nothing about the plot. It was essentially the WB logo melting and reforming into a bar thingy, which then morped into a T in which the number 3 was cut.
Does anyone know if there is a TiVo demographic?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Judging from the way I and many people I know watch television (admittedly not a statistically significant data set), I would guess that a lot of those shows or genres in which people do not skip commercials, or change the channel, result from "ambient" television viewing. That is, people leaving the television on in the background while they do other things, like read Slashdot, or cook dinner.
The shows where people eliminate commercials are those to which they are actually paying attention.
Trust not a man who's rich in flax / His morals may be sadly lax
Do they need a new TiVo technology to know that all ads are skipped ?
I've had a TiVo for three years now, and I don't skip all ads. First, some shows are compelling enough that I watch them live, and am forced to suffer through ads as a result. Second, ads for products that I'm actually interested in are worth watching, as are genuinely funny and creative ads (I love the Jack in the Box Chipotle Chicken Sandwich commercial). Not all advertising is evil.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
According to Forrester Research, when personal-video-recorder (PVR) technology reaches 30 million households in 2006, 76% of advertisers say they'll cut their TV ad spending -- one quarter of them by more than 41%. Instead of buying TV ads, 65% plan to spend more on program sponsorship, 46% will increase budgets for product placement, and 36% say they'll rechannel their dollars to online advertising.
This quote is exactly what I want to see. A couple years ago, Schindler's List ran uninterrupted except for an intermission on TV and was sponsored by Ford. The only mention of Ford was a brought to you by Ford message and a logo suring the intermission and at the beginning and end. No, I didn't have to look up who sponsored Schindler's List, I actually remembered, thanks Ford. This is similar to what PBS does minus the telethon. I've actually watched who the sponsors are for some of the shows on PBS, simply because they have a relevant product or service that *gasp* I may actually be interested in.
Are you listening big media and advertising?
Reality TV, news, and "event" programming such as the Oscars do significantly better at getting viewers to see the commercials.
Hell, we alreay know that reality TV viewers will watch _anything_ - why are you surpriised that they are watching the adds too? It's probably of better quality than the programme itself!
Beep beep.
It's more likely that the decent shows will be sponsored instead of saturated with ads. Firefly, brought to you by Preparation H!
Seriously, good entertainment will always draw an audience and audiences will always draw advertisers. If broadband continues to get rolled out, we could see TVoIP with advertisers taking an international market campaign sponsoring programs on the net.
That's the beauty of capitalism. It eventually dethrones the most entrenched incumbents as they continue to foul up. You just can't predict how and when.
Reality TV, news, and "event" programming are even less interesting that the worst of the ads. No, wait, the news is more interesting, but people don't watch it delayed, so they can't skip ads.
I certainly hope they're going to account for people who show the show as well as the commercials. Of course, there's nothing they can do about accounting for people who aren't paying any attention to the TV because they just want background noise while they play chess.
I thought Tivo was already concerned about the entertainment/advertising biz getting teed off about viewers skipping commercials (hence Tivo's lack of a "30-second-skip" button). So now they're going to give them hard data showing exactly how bad it is? Seems like an odd strategy.
You may have noticed that a lot of major websites make you watch a couple of commercials before watching a video clip these days. This is essentially the way television is going to work in the future. You'll have a dedicated device or piece of software (Hello, "trusted" computing platforms) which reads and interprets the incoming streams, and requires you to do something interactive in between chunks of a program in order to continue watching it. Hardcore hackers will of course find a way to automate these processes and avoid watching commercials just as they have always circumvented stupidity, but this will keep the vast majority of people on the straight and narrow path, so to speak.
Of course, it's going to be a while before that happens; Content creators and providers who are tied to the current infrastructure and their investments in it -- read: broadcast television outlets and media networks -- will continue to try to legislate rather than innovate. While you can expect them to enjoy some limited success (We have seen some already) ultimately they will have to solve the problem with technology.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
TiVo's doing this the right way. They're not telling the ad execs who skipped their ad, they're telling the ad execs how many people skipped their ad... 80% of the people watching the show you sponsored over a TiVo think your ad wasn't worth their time.
In contrast, TiVo points out that there almost always are several ads that air during the Super Bowl that actually get people to rewind back to them to see the ad again... wow, an ad that's so good people actually want to see it, what a concept!
TiVo's good at brokering this kind of compromise between the industry and end users, as opposed to Microsoft whose DVR errored in being too pro-industry and ReplayTV whose DVR errored in being too anti-industry. TiVo seems to be able to come up with a product that both expands user's abilities and keeps the industry lawyers away...
Why not skip all but the first showing of a commercial?
1. Ads I watch on purpose. These are very rare, and usually involve pretty girls in skimpy outfits. Humor can snare me too, but most advertisers are too clueless to do it right.
2. Ads I ignore. This is 90% of the TV ads. If I'm watching live I'll probably see/hear part of it while I go to the bathroom/kitchen/stick my nose in a book. Otherwise, I'll FF past it.
3. Ads I can't stand. Bad sound effects will piss me off everytime. If I'm watching delayed, I'll FF past it. If I'm watching live, I'll "mute" until the show resumes, then pause for 15 minutes to ensure I won't have to suffer through any more commercials! If I didn't have the option of FFing or muteing, I'd go bonkers, destroy the TV with an axe, then go after the advertiser!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.