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."

Comments

So much for TiVo

[maotx]

Nothing like watching a great show and having to minimize the link for the latest viagra pill with your kids.
And to think, TiVo use to be a quality DVR...

I guess the pressure about the ability to skip ads and their lack of revenue convinced them to take this approach.
One would think that with the recent signing with Comcast that TiVo wouldn't have the need to pull something like this.
Given my choice in the future I do believe I shall stick with something more like MythTV

Re:So much for TiVo

[airjrdn]

Tell your sister to go put together a MythTV box.

See how Tivo is still relevant?

Re:So much for TiVo

[spoonyfork]

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.

Re:So much for TiVo

[mmusson]

One problem people are reporting is that the overlaid ad makes it very difficult to see where to stop fast forwarding.

Also this happen on a rewind too if you read the Tivo forums. And due to a bug its displaying during the programs and not during the adds if you pause live.

Re:So much for TiVo

[Tibor the Hun]

The advertisers paid for the spot?

I also seem to have paid for the cable subscription.
But maybe you get your cable for free, so the only way for the cable company to make money is from the advertising.

My 50 bucks a month must be buying toilet paper, or 1 dollar bills for lighting cigars.

I swear to god, if all this no-ff-through-commercials and advertising bullshit keeps growing, I'm gonna buy me a VHS and learn how to program the recording timers.

Re:So much for TiVo

[Grishnakh]

The advertisers payed of the spot, so they should get something.

I don't give a rat's ass what the advertisers paid for, or what their business model is. They paid the TV networks to broadcast their ad, and that's what happened.

If I own a TiVo, then I have paid TiVo for a digital recording device which I can use to time-shift programs and skip ads. I have not signed any sort of contract with the TV broadcasting networks, and to my knowledge, TiVo has no contract with them obligating them to prevent users from skipping their ads. If they do have any such contract, then I want no part of TiVo's service, and will look for an alternative.

It's not my problem, or that of the DVR manufacturers, that the advertisers' business model isn't working. That's their problem. All they're paying for, and getting, is the chance at getting someone to watch their ad by broadcasting it. This does not imply any guarantee that people will actually sit there and watch it, instead of fast-forwarding past it, or even going to the crapper while it plays. Why should I pay for a device which forces me to watch ads? If the advertisers don't like this, they can go find another way of advertising.

I think it would be interesting if they did something like this for free downloads of shows. 5-10 seconds for an image of the ads that would normally be where a commercial break is. You can pay to not have the ads.

This would only be acceptable if they gave away the (ad-enabled) TiVos for free.

Re:So much for TiVo

[badasscat]

First of all, the ad is for the product you're fast forwarding through - that is, if you fast forward throughb a movie ad, you'll see a "billboard" or a banner ad for THAT MOVIE.

And this got modded as INFORMATIVE??

You obviously have not seen one of these ads. I got an ad for The Interpreter last night (apparently the only ad TiVo's got right now) during "24" - there were no ads for this movie during the ads I was ff'ing through (that I could see, anyway).

The ad appears for the exact length of the ad as it's being fast forwarded - that is, about a second or two.

Uh, no. The ad appears for the entire duration you are fast-forwarding. In my case, this meant that yes, I missed the point at which the show came back several times, because the ad takes up more than 50% of the screen area, and it's right in the middle of the screen.

Apparently this is not supposed to happen (the ads are supposed to disappear when the show comes back), but a) to have it work properly TiVo would need some sort of commercial detect technology, and as far as I know it has none (it does know when special "flagged" commercials from co-sponsors run, but not all ads are flagged), b) that commercial detect technology would have to work 100% of the time, and no commercial detection does that, and c) even if TiVo did have such a thing, and it worked all the time, the TiVo boxes are so slow right now with the 7.1a software that they'd probably lag by 3 or 4 seconds anyway, which when ff'ing on 3X (which is really faster than 3X speed) could be two minutes into the TV show.

In short, these ads totally destroy one of the main reasons for using TiVo, and when you see one, you'll feel the same. The idea as I first heard it actually didn't bother me so much in theory (even though I am paying for this service after all, so I don't see why I should be seeing TiVo-delivered ads), but the implementation in practice is absolutely horrendous. It will definitely, 100% cause me to cancel my subscription if it is not completely redesigned.

"Our goal..."

[grub]

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.

Yeah, its disguisting

[FortKnox]

This popped up on my TiVo while watching "Good Eats." I'm sitting there, find out how to use water to slow down and control the tempature of custard when all of a sudden I get a popup for feminine product.

Really, what does that have anything to do with an egg based custard? I mean, you can add fruit and other neat things to the bottom of the custard for some variations, but feminine products had no business anywhere around there. Almost lost my appe[tt]ite!

Why does this not seem right?

[scifience]

Let me get this straight: I pay for the TiVo device itself, then I pay a monthly service fee. Now I also have to put up with highly invasive advertising?

This might be acceptable if there was no monthly fee for using the device, but this is akin to adding commercials to HBO. Either choose to be subscription-supported or advertising-supported, but not both.

Re:Why does this not seem right?

[mshiltonj]

Either choose to be subscription-supported or advertising-supported, but not both.

Yeah, like newspapers and magazines.

Bring it on!

[nacturation]

Rather than pop-up ads, I'm fully in support of pop-under ads, the kind that only show when you turn the TV off.

No, Tivo. No.

[katsushiro]

I'm sorry, if I allready paid for the machine, and on top of that, I'm paying a monthly fee for the service, I do *not* find it acceptable to have the service push ads at me. If you're going to be pushing ads at me, then start refunding my monthly fee. That's the way things work for me. I'm willing to pay you for your service, no problem. But I'm going to pay you in *either* cash or ads, not both. And seeing as part of the reason I got a Tivo was to skip ads, then replacing those ads with other ads is *not* acceptable to me.

Looks like it's time to finally sit down and build that MythTV box I've been thinking about.

Well, that seals it.

[Ummagumma]

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.

Makes me glad I went with the Home Theater PC

[dragon_imp]

I don't have to deal with popups, a small hard drive, a single hard drive and lack of upgradability. Plus, I have 3 tv tuner/encoders so I can record three shows simultaneously while watching a fourth recorded show.

I build my own HTPC using an Abit AN-7, AMD Athlon XP 2500+, Hauppauge PVR-250 tv tuner/encoder cards. It is driven by WinXP Pro SP2 and SageTV.

You can see my HTPC at http://wwww.terrystockdale.com/htpc/htpc_1.shtml .

Terry

Re:Why does this not seem right? Everywhere...

[Nom du Keyboard]

I pay for the TiVo device itself, then I pay a monthly service fee. Now I also have to put up with highly invasive advertising?

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?

Sign up now for "How to kill your product 101"

[zotz]

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all the best,

drew

No big deal

[mmascari]

Currently while watching a commercial supported TV broadcast, an advertiser has a commercial break in the program where they show 30 seconds of video. While using a TiVo and fast forwarding, this 30 seconds of video is blurry and takes less than 30 seconds to play.

Based on how it's supposed to work, with the new tags. While watching a commercial supported TV broadcast, an advertiser has a commercial break in the program where they show 30 seconds of video. While using a TiVo and fast forwarding, this 30 seconds of video is overlayed with a different image optimized for shorter visible duration and takes the same amount of time as before that's less than 30 seconds to play.

There is no impact to the way the TiVo functions.
There is no forced watching of ads.
There is no new add popping up.
It's simply a format shift from blurry video to a static image.
It's a way to redefine the 30 second spot. It becomes a less than 30 second spot of variable duration depending on the fast forward speed.

The easiest way to opt out of ads on TV:
Buy premium commercial free programming, like HBO, Showtime, Cinimax, Starz, ...

Since this is a pilot of the new tags, that obviously isn't working the way it's supposed to, things do need to change. Since it displayed over regular content where it's not supposed to.

Things we don't know:
Is the problem with the TiVo software?
Is the problem with the broadcasters national feed?
Is the problem with a specific cable companies regional feed?
Were the tags added at the start of a commercial and still present throughout the rest of the broadcast?

All of those need to be addressed before any solution is possible.

Re:Why does this not seem right? Everywhere...

[garett_spencley]

Yup, I'm currently boycotting movie theaters because of this.

I remember in the late 80's or early 90's it was either the first or second 'new' Batman movie with Michael Keaton. They had an advertisement for Coke at the beginning. It was even themed for the movie and people were OUTRAGED. For the next 10 years or so there were no more attempts that I remember to do non-movie commercials before movies.

Man how times have changed.. and fast.

But, unfortunately, I don't think our wallets are very loud in these cases. Movie theaters, television, music etc. is all teenager domain.. and I don't see teenagers boycotting any form of entertainment any time soon. Even advertisements are 'cool' for teenagers these days. As long as teenagers are buying up movie tickets and chugging down ad after ad without complaining then it's here to stay :(