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Tivo Plans Commercials On Demand
MCSqrd writes "News.com reports that Tivo will soon feature interactive ads that apparently link from ordinary television commercials. Viewers can activate the link and view extended, interactive content about the product being advertised.
Tivo hopes to 'tune in' to a way to keep advertisers on their side since the idea of TV commercials being made obsolete because of PVRs has made them an enemy to marketing departments everywhere.
Is anyone else reminded of the blipverts from the Max Headroom series?"
This is not a new TiVo feature, it's an underused one at this point. There are a few car company ads that are presently use it.
The way it works is that the sponsors purchase a TiVo Showcase package, which is an advertising section that has always been part of TiVo. The Showcases can be filled with video content that is spliced out of the "Teleworld Infomercial"... a quasi-weekly program that TiVo purchases during the early morning hours on the Discovery Channel that all TiVos are programmed to return.
The sponsors then purchase a typical campaign's worth standard 30-second TV spots, and they encode in the VBI (the same place where Closed Captioning hides) a signals that all TiVos understand. This signal tells the TiVo that whenever this spot is encountered, to display a "Press Thumbs Up For More Information" icon while it is playing. If the user gives the confirming thumbs up signal on their remote, they're transported directly to the Showcase section for that sponsor. Whenever the user chooses to leave the Showcase, they'll be returned to exactly where they were in whatever program they were viewing.
You might be surprised to know that TiVo is recording this Teleworld Infomercial program, because it's never directly displayed in the user interface. You also might think that TiVo is kidnapping some of your diskspace... but in fact they're saving the ad content to the "reserved section" of TiVo's funky Linux-based OS. You never had access to that disk volume, and they already subtracted this space from the advertised hour-wise capacity of a unit. If you upgrade your TiVo's HD size, all of the additional space created goes to user recordings, the reserved space stays the same size.
Gotta give TiVo credit, they're finding a revenue model that actually issues a challenge to advertisers... come up with some ad content that makes people want to watch it.
Is anyone else reminded of the blipverts from the Max Headroom series?"
No, because this is the inverse of a blipvert. A blipvert was a split-second commerical inserted into Network XXIII programs, which had the unfortunate side effect of causing overweight viewers to explode.
This feature actually requires user input (a confirming click of the green Thumbs Up key during the conventional 30-second ad) in order to jump to a 3-minute presentation that has been stored on the TiVo harddrive. The user can bail out of the 3-minute presentation at any time and return to their "live" stream whenever they want. TiVo will do the favor of pausing the program at exactly the point they left it, where the user can fast-forward to catch up as much as they want.
TiVo actually has research to prove that people will actually rewatch a Pepsi comercial if Britney Spears is performing a dance routine while singing the soda company's jingle.
So it's not fair to say that nobody watches comercials with a TiVo... it's just that the ad sponsors have to come up with comercials people will want to watch when given the ability to "gong" them off the stage with a fast forward button.
Imagine this:
Instead of 30 second commercials you fast forward through, all the commercials were on your Tivo as well. and tivo only recorded commercials for products that you liked (tivo commercial suggestions). That way, you don't HAVE to watch a commercial to watch a show... but Tivo makes money (and stays in business) so that I can continue to get their service while not getting commericals.... I like this a LOT
And if Tivo can make a little money from the Ad firms without impacting my viewing habits , then so be it.
The only problem I might have with it is if my Tivo had the wrong idea of what I liked and didn't like. What a horrible time I might have if my Tivo recorded only ads for feminine hygiene products....
I think where Tivo will make the most headway will be with smaller cable networks. The problem is, there aren't very many of them left. Why do I say this? The major networks (all of whom either own major cable channels or have major investments in cable providers) are wholly against Tivo poaching "their" ad dollars. Their attitude is that if they're going to allow Tivo to put up adverts (and they need to pass some sort of signal to provide this capability) then they want a cut of the action.
The only way around this is for Tivo to go court the little guys, and thus force the incumbents to follow their lead, or lose ad dollars. I imagine the advertisers are curious to try this feature - the only question is, will they get the chance?
Another revenue source that Tivo really ought to be persuing is movies-on-demand. They should try streaming data in much the same way Disney's Moviebeam does, only over broadband connections (for those who have it.) Thus, for the marginal cost of a "premium" subscription, users can also order the latest movies. I don't think that many people would end up keeping this movie-on-demand service, but it'd be a great lure for people to sign up for Tivo service in general, and for them to keep the basic scheduling service.
Though a lot of people like to complain about the "yellow star" ads, I have found several of them quite useful. Even the direct promotions. A good example: There is a TiVo PVR that will burn directly to DVD. For a couple of weeks they had a yellow star ad that included 4 minute and 1 minute walkthroughs about the features and benefits of the unit. Pretty standard. But there was a third link which requested product literature. I liked the product, so I requested the lit. Got it a week later, read through it, and made a purchase decision.
It's horribly efficient. No "type in this 30-character URL", no "type in all your mailing info here", just push select and voila. This isn't the first time I've done it... TiVo offered a promotional DVD to give to your friends to tell them about TiVo. They made it available online, and via yellow star. Clicked, got the DVD. No hassles. No typing. Easy. And even after opting in (you can opt in, neutral, or out) to data collection in my personal preferences, I receive no junk mail or spam whatsoever from these companies. I get what I ask for, and nothing else.
This could be a phenomenal money maker for TiVo if done right. If I'm interested in your product, and you make information gathering as easy as pushing the "Thumbs Up" while watching the commercial (ala TiVoMatic icon), I guarantee I watch your 3- or 4-minute promotional video. Everyone wins. It helps the sponsor promote their product, and it does so without pissing off the end-user, because they request the video, they're not force fed. Now it becomes a convenience instead of an annoyance.
I hope the rest of the marketing world takes a good hard look at this business model... make your information easily accessible, don't beat your target audience over the head with it.
I gave TiVo a suggestion when I first got my TiVo and heard all of the "TiVo will die" comments everywhere. My suggestion was that TiVo should allow the thumbing of commercials. Then they could sell that information to advertisers so they'd know what commercials that people thought were good.
This would allow me to let Quizno's know that I can't stand there singing hair balls.
No, but I am reminded of the "Want more?" hyperlink which appeared on the futuristic televisions in Starship Troopers.
Damn... Now I am also reminded of Denise Richards in Spandex.
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One of the best ones I saw was for the Nissan 350Z. In the Showcase it said to press 'select' and they'd mail me a DVD of the Z racing around Prague. Sure enough, a bit later a DVD showed up at my door after simply pressing a button on my remote.
Now that's a powerful car commercial.
tbdean
It's been true enough in the world of sports for quite some time already. If you ever watch old replays on ESPN Classic, you can see the gradual intrusion of advertising into the sports arena.
It used to be the Sugar Bowl. Now it's the Nokia Sugar Bowl. Was the Fiesta Bowl. Now it's the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Don't ask fans of the old Candlestick Park what they think of the arena's "new" name. That's just the tip of the iceberg there. What about NASCAR? Is there anyone watching NASCAR who doesn't feel off-kilter when they can't say "Winston Cup" anymore? Does anybody remember that, rather than the name of an award/trophy, they are talking about a vendor when they say that?
Media advertising has been with us for some time, lurking in the shadows of consciousness. The seminal symbol of sports events, the Goodyear Blimp, is itself a giant advertising billboard flying from one sporting/concert event to another. Watch any televised World Cup soccer match, where instead of commercial breaks people may take a trip to the bathroom or kitchen during (and miss), you are now subconciously enticed into viewing an advertising logo every 12.5 seconds when you peer at the score or time remaining. Need I now point out the even more incredibly intrusive AOL yellow "dude" that runs onto the football field to display the first down yellow line? (That one killed me the first time I saw it...talk about marketing)
The more DVRs like ReplayTV and Tivo make the rounds, the more this sort of advertising will integrate itself into the programming itself. If not in some blatant smack of product placement ("Vote for the next American Idol by sending VOTE with your AT&T Wireless cell phone"), then certainly by some subtle logo or "bug" placed in such a way that you can't exclude the logo with any technological means without severly impacting the watchability of the programming itself.
I wouldn't be surprised if you don't see television programming deriving someday to the "watch-per-view" format that many premium websites go lately which require you to sit and watch a 30sec commercial before proceeding to the next page/download/etc. With the convergence of digital media and control devices (remotes, etc), it's not unlikely you'd get some method where you must watch a commercial and key a code on your remote to continue with the show. Incredibly invasive -- yes -- effective to force people to watch a commercial -- absolutely. How many people could they force to sit through mandatory commercials to watch the Friends finale in May?
Londovir
Maybe with a system like this in place, advertisers will finally air all the cool commercials seen online and overseas. That Honda "Cogs" advert was the coolest thing never seen on US television. Tivo is providing an outlet for advertisers to show extended ads like that from Honda. This also gives opportunity to showcase great storymercials, like Reebok's Terry Tate. The "skip commercials" argument is bogus - most people buy a Tivo to replace the VCR. Ask most people why they actually watch the entire Super Bowl every year - its the adverts. So there IS a big viewer market for good advertising.