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TiVo Starts Testing "Pop-up" Ads
mkraft writes "ZDNet is reporting that TiVo has started a testing a new pop-up style ad on a random and limited number of subscriber's TiVo as of this weekend. The ads are designed to be displayed on screen when the user fast forwards through specially tagged commercials. Clicking the thumbsup or select button on the TiVo remote will take the user to a menu containing more information about the advertisement (text and/or video).
Unfortunately according to reports on the TiVo Community forums the ads are also showing up during actual programs as well."
FTA: "Our goal is in no way to interfere with the TiVo experience," TiVo spokesman David Shane said.
TiVo has gone from a cool company with financial problems to another advertising laden CrapCo that's cutting it's own throat. Even more reason to cancel cable entirely, buy a divx/xvid ready dvd player (well under CA$100) and download what really interests you without ads. Don't worry, the big studios won't starve. They're making buckets on product placement within the shows now.
Trolling is a art,
During Christmas I was 30 second skipping commercials and it gave a pop up and said to enter the 20 digit number on the Replay web page to be entered for a drawing of some cash (cant remember exactly). I did it - foolishly. I think it was a marketing study to evaluate the rate of capturing attention so commercials could be inserted for revenue.
I have seen the Tivo commercial "thumbs up" but it is really non intrusive and you have only a half second to press the button the get the ad. It is just a matter of time until the commercials are back in your face though. Since I use both Tivo and Replay for comparisons. I am fortunate to pay per month instead of forking of the case for a lifetime subscription. I bet the people that have lifetime memberships will have more popups in the future. My rate of revenue/return via popup ads will approach zero if the become too intrusive.
We the users are willing to put up with ads to a certain extent, but beyond that, we will use whatever technology it takes to remove them because they are too annoying.
Advertisers simply have to learn to place ads below this annoyance threshold, and they will reap the rewards. One example of a company that 'gets it': Google. Their ads are sufficiently innocuous that it's not worth the trouble to block them or get rid of them. The result? They make lots of money off of ads.
The big networks should realize this. They want to keep their current paradigm, where a person watches 15 minutes of commercials for every hour of TV. That won't work in the future, since the users will use something like TiVo or a download that has no ads in order to get around the annoyance. If, on the other hand, the network offered us a free download of our favourite show, and during each ad segment, there was a single 10-second ad (and it was relatively funny or cool), then we wouldn't skip past it, and they would make lots of ad money.
I think these companies need to wake up to what consumers are really willing to put up with. We are willing to watch ads and buy products we like, but we are not willing to have our time wasted.
My gf has been egging me to get rid of the TIVO and go with the cable company offering for a while now. She wants the ability to watch one show while recording another, and the ability to use the DVR with Hi-Def programming. This just seals the deal. I'll be cancelling tonight.
Goodbye Tivo, you'll be out of business soon.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
I was going to buy a Tivo so I can watch TV without advertisements. If they're just going to shove more ads at me, I guess I'm just going to skip watching TV altogether. *shrug*
Oh well. Nice knowing you, Tivo.
Let me see:
1: I drive to the movie house (have you seen the price of gasoline?)
2: Pay an insane amount for a theater ticket (not to mention popcorn)
3: Get 5 minutes of commercials for other products (that's before the 10 minutes of trailer commercials for other movies)
4: PROFIT! (for someone else).
Yeah, its happening everywhere because we aren't pushing back hard enough. So far, legislators in one state are pushing the idea that theaters will be requried to post the actual starting time of the movie.
Just how much more of this do you plan to take?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Nothing like watching a great show and having to minimize the link for the latest viagra pill with your kids.
Outstanding point. My brother is equally if not more concerned about what ads his children are exposed to while watching TV. One solution was to filter all ads with the notion of there never having been a worthwhile ad to watch. The assumption is that all ads are harmful to children. TiVo was a device that could help parents accomplish such as task.
Speak truth to power.
Might as well just cross them off the list of "Good Guys" as if the deal with ComCast shouldn't have already strongly suggested that, but consider TiVo have had this ability in there all along and, like summoning a sleeper agent to commit some dastardly act (like replace all your Guinness with Budweiser.)
Adios TiVo. Rot in hell.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In france they have (or at least had) one hour of commercials on their channel (Saturday at supper).
It was the most viewed time slot for the whole week!
Tivo, however, could create an "Ads Channel" where if you watch it, you pay less on your monthly.
To keep viewers honest AND interested make it interactive like having a short survey at the end of the commercial.
They could even make it a game or a game-show (name the advertized product!)
What they have done instead is given their user-base a reason to hack their TIVO box or bail right out of their revenue stream!
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I have a Dish Network DVR box that still has instant 30 second and back 10 second skip. Hit the skip button 5 or 6 times and I'm completely through most commercial breaks in a second or less. The "fast forward" stuff is crap on a DVR!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There are two important lessons to be learned from the rise and fall of Tivo. First, don't lock yourself into any pay subscriptions. There is no guarantee they won't turn into ad machines. By subscribing for short periods of time or by using a free or ad supported scheduling service you can demand quality service or walk.
Lesson two, any company can be bought or can partner with one that does not have your best interests at heart. I would not buy a encryption service from the government. I won't buy a garage door opener from a car thief. I won't buy a device to remove ads from TV from someone partnered with those ad providers. It is important to buy products and services from someone motivated to make you happy as their business model. That is no longer Tivo's business model. They make money by making Comcast happy first, and users second. It makes me glad I bought a device without a subscription from someone who does not work with the cable companies. It is also why I don't have to view ads and why I can record what I want, burn DVDs of what I want, and skip 30 seconds without a hack.
Tivo has made a huge mistake, and a very big potential competitor here is MS. I don't trust them at all, but right now they are motivated to making their customers happy with a media center. RIP Tivo.
What a delightfully effective way of sending a sorta "mexican wave" of shudders down the spine of every person who's ever touched Internet Explorer in the last 5 years or so and instantly put them off your product for life.
I've never seen a company go so quickly from "cool" to "near sco-level"
If this is true, they can go feck off and die, and rot alongside the rest of the popup mongering scum.
If it's an early April Fools... well... that's another story!
I did call to complain about this, and the 1st woman I spoke to, denied that TiVo was doing this. The second person I spoke to actually admitted they were doing this, but denied that it was happening during actual show content, which it most certainly were.
Oh, and I did post a message on their official forum. Twice. They deleted it. Twice. It didn't conform to their warm-and-fuzzy "TiVo is the best!" requirement.
I'm a mostly happy TiVo Subscriber
I am a happy user of my cable company's HD DVR (motorola 6xxx model), and I'm a picky SOB. There are a few small annoyances that I can't think of offhand, but its a pretty slick box (and it does not use my phone line).
Being that my cable box is a monthly add on service to my existing cable bill, it would seem illogical for the cable company to add a "feature" like popup ads. Regardless if I view ads or not, the cable company gets the channels at a fixed rate and I pay a fixed rate according to what channels I want. The tv channels get their advertising revenue at a rate based on their audience, not by the view (like web advertising) or according to me viewing the ads or not.
Also, its worth mentioning that I still see a good amount of ads. It seems like I still see the same ad multiple times. In fact, I just went out and bought 8 brand new cars on those low lease deals because the ads were so good to distort my logic. (Just kidding)
Now, TiVo too gets paid the same if you watch the ads or not. So why are they doing this? I guess the base rate of revenue is not paying off their debt fast enough.
Hack it. I have hacked my DTIVO to run a version of software not available for the DTIVO, added a larger drive, and I'll bet that I can get rid of these ads too. Am I a rocket scientist? By no means but I can read and I spent ALOT of time doing just that over on the Dealdatabase.com forums. where the normal (and linked) TIVO forums will scream bloody murder if you talk about pulling content off of a box the DealDatabase Forums will teach you how to do that and much much more.
My TIVO no longer accepts updates from the mothership, is networked, runs a WEB server to allow me to control it, and can accept additional modifications anytime I want. You can do this and more and it doesn't take much more than some research to do it...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Predictions of TiVo's death are greatly exaggerated, in my opinion. In my opinion, the banner adds while fast forwarding are a great idea.
Think about it, advertisers want a captive audience for their advertising. They pay for product placement in movies and TV shows because they know the audience is watching attentively. Not true for running commercials on radio and TV. People walk away for a bathroom break, to grab a snack, or any number of other things.
But if someone fast forwards through a commercial, advertisers know that you will be looking at the screen, because you want to stop fast forwarding before the show starts. You are a very captive audience, and you will be looking right at the advertising.
Users may not like the banner ads, especially as TiVo is currently testing them and working out any bugs. In the end though, the ads are an incredibly good thing for TiVo (the company.) As long as TiVo services, TiVo subscription service will continue, and new TiVo models and features will be introduced. Good for TiVo.
There is definitely more positive than negative with the new banner ads.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.