TiVo Lets You Respond to Ads

WalletBoy writes "TiVo is implementing a new feature in their Series 2 recorders where viewers can choose to have their personal-contact information sent to advertisers when certain commercials air using just their remote control." This is actually exactly how I think advertising should work. If I want more information, I can press thumbs up and have my email address sent to the advertiser. It's opt-in. I'm sure it will work because they use the same concept for letting you record a show by pressing thumbs up when a commercial for it is airing. If only every commercial supported these functions. Now if only MTV would use the same thing to email me song info for videos I like instead of covering the screen in tacky text.

Comments

Respond to THIS

[violet16]

I assume, of course, there will be a thumbs-down button so I can indicate I have no intention of ever purchasing the product featured in a particular ad, and will be never shown it again.

Re:Respond to THIS

[danheskett]

You are right about ad demograhpics. I finally convinced my wife that she is no longer the target market for MTV, which is why she now thinks most of the shows "are stupid". It's not hard to figure out that you aren't the target market when they are advertising condoms, violent video games, music CDs of people you'll never listen to no matter what, fast food, and small cheaply made trendy cars with names the like "Matrix" and "Focus". After reminding her that eating out for us means a nice family italian resturant and not Wendy's, that she drives an expensive-ish mid-size import, that we have never seen a movie with a rapper playing a lead role, that we don't use pre-paid mobile phones, and that we won't be buying any CDs featuring artists with names like Beyoncee or Nickleback she realized that MTV isn't a network for her anymore (and yes, there were tears involved.. she was one of the many who took turns calling the cable company and demanding "her MTV"). Now, we watch shows that advertise things that interest us, and it seems that we both agree that it's a much better fit! Ads for vacations, mid-size cars and SUVs, chain resturants, movies featuring Jude Law and all that. That hardest thing is now remember to check what things are advertised when we watch the first episode of a new show (meaning, not instantly fast forward our DVR past the commericals). We can tell within about 6-8 minutes if the show is worth investing our time in!

Re:Respond to THIS

[pegr]

Really, you can get an idea for the target audience for a show by watching the ads. Watch late night TV? You must need psychic help so you can decide which work-at-home scheme you want to invest in. At home during the day? You must be an unemployed laborer who was injured on the job and got screwed by the insurance company or you're a homemaker that needs a lot of feminine hygene and cleaning products.

Would this be a good time to bring up the "My TiVo Thinks I'm Gay!" story?

Re:Respond to THIS

[TheFlamingoKing]

What VH1 are you people watching?

Does your VH1 show music videos? They used to really late at night, but I don't know if they do anymore.

Where is VH1's Headbanger's Ball? Is it Celebrity Fit Club? The Surreal Life? Hogan Knows Best?

Did you watch the VH1 coverage of Live8? It was the exact same feed as MTV. All the proof I need that VH1 is MTV.

I remember when you could turn on the TV at 3:00pm and watch a music video. The whole thing, start to finish, the way the band wanted you to see it.

Now I feel old...

What I'd rather have is...

[clintp]

What I'd rather have is the "Thumbs Up/Down" buttons act as direct feedback to the advertizers:

I like/Don't like this ad. You missed/hit your target audience. This ad was funny/offensive. That's cool/inane. More/no more Purple Pill commercials. That movie looks interesting/boring. Etc...

But of course, I miss most of the ads anyway with TiVo. :)

Re:What I'd rather have is...

[erlenic]

If they implemented this, I'd occasionally sit through commercials just so I can do this. If advertisers could make better commercials, maybe I wouldn't be so inclined to skip them, or at least not be as annoyed when watching live TV.

Google should Make a Design for a PVR

[icecow]

It would allow people to search on google, and click on contexual VIDEO ads that download to the PVR.

BBC has an open source video codec availible.

Google could decide the design(much like microsoft makes hardware people adhere) and just let hardware makers use the design for free. Google would just cash in on the ad flow(ad peoples bandwidth), and it would launch podcasting/videocasting to a new level.

Strange efforts for the advertising sector

[Jerle0]

I don't use TiVo, but I wonder how many ad companies would really want something like this. Right now, it usually takes the effort of a phone call or going to an internet site or something to learn more about the featured product, which means those who take the effort, generally have a bit of interest. With it being made so easy now, I bet a lot of people would think 'Hey, thats might be interesting', hit the button, and then not think about it until the ad mail comes unexpectedly. This would probably be not as good for advertisers...fewer quality results, even if they reach a much broader audience. I certainly wouldn't want to use this method if I was marketing something.

Re:Strange efforts for the advertising sector

[Kisil]

I disagree; I think advertizers will love this feature. Not only do you get immediate feedback on whether your ad was effective, but you get to send targeted email to users who've already expressed interest. I delete tons and tons of spam every day.. but that's because I'm not in the market for blue pills and free PPV. If I could be guaranteed that only messages I'd asked for showed up in my inbox, I'd pay a lot more attention to them.

I think for some people there might be a learning curve on a product like this - "Hey, this is cool, I'll opt in for this, and this, and this..." - but eventually, people will learn to use it only when they're really interested. The 'send me an email' format also enables users to respond on their own time. Actually, I suppose it even provides another interest check for the company - how many users who responded to the ad responded to the email?

Remember, too, that targeted advertizing has made boat-loads of money for certain other companies we hear a lot about.

Nielsen Ratings

[RamboIII]

Wouldn't it be a good idea to give the people the option to rate everything, not just the commercials?

I've never heard anyone say, "Oh wait! Don't turn the channel. This is my favorite commercial."

All the more reason why micropayments are good

[ShatteredDream]

If the content cartels would invest in a real micropayment system, Tivo would be awesome for them. In fact, I bet it'd be more profitable than anything they've had before. Instead of watching ads, I'd pay $2/episode for something like Battlestar Galactica or Stargate SG1. After the series is over, people who have paid for half ofthe series should get a 25-30% discount on the boxed set for the season and people who paid for the entire thing should get about 60-70% off. If I've paid $40-$60 for the entire season already, that's real, guaranteed money in their hands. Then, if they play their cards right, as a loyal fan I can buy the entire series on DVD for $25 including S&H since I already paid $40-$60 for the series.

The cost of making DVDs is really low now. If they pay only $1/DVD to make and it costs them $2 to make the box and shrink wrap it, a 5 DVD set like Stargate SG1 would cost $7 to make. They could realistically go to $15 before S&H if they were really gung ho about getting a paying fanbase going. Just think, right after you watch the last episode in the series, the TV channel popups up a message saying "Thanks for supporting this series with your micropayments, if you would like to own this series, because of your generous support we'll give you a 70% discount on the boxed set." They'd make a killing doing that for many series.

The problem though, is that regular TV sitcom bullshit would probably be hit hard initially by that. Imagine people having to pay for an episode of Friends or Seinfeld? At any rate, if the Cartoon Network, Comedy Central and Sci Fi Channel offered this, knowing their audiences, it'd work like a charm.

Re:All the more reason why micropayments are good

[jrumney]

Even better, have the following options for the micropayment system:

• $0.00 - Watch episode with forced advertising throughout
• $0.50 - Watch episode with ads before and after only
• $2.00 - Watch episode once only with no advertising
• $4.00 - Watch ad-free episode and record for future replaying

Re:All the more reason why micropayments are good

[sholden]

Let's see a one hour show. Assume 20 minutes of ads (pretend there are no network promos and so on which don't generate revenue from advertisers). Assume by several you mean four. Then 20*2*4000 $160000.

So they would need 80000 people to pay their $2. Except of course without those 20 minutes of ads it would be a 40 minute show, so they can fit more in a day (or have more time for shows with ads), 40/60*80000, so about 53000 people be enough.

Of course they all ready do "on demand" programming. I'd damn hope they don't have ads since they charge $4 for a movie - but I'll never know since I DVD rentals are $1 a few blocks away (or $2 just round the corner).

Surely the model would be show the new episodes at $2 a pop without ads and then a week (a few days, whatever) later show it as normal and hence generate ad revenue anyway...

great idea

[mfloy]

I like this idea, and I think it could be used in other areas. What if users could use their remotes to review shows, much like how slashdot users moderate posts. For example, if you were watching an Episode of The Simpsons, and it wasn't as funny as usual, you could press a button to e-mail the creators "BELOW STANDARDS"...or if it was good "VERY FUNNY".

Re:great idea

[KD5YPT]

Hm... I think that would be a good idea. A better way to rate shows then the Nielson ratings (if they're still using that). That way, good shows won't be smacked.

Of course, this could be open to abuse by a certain group.

Right

[Safety Cap]

After the series is over, people who have paid for half ofthe series should get a 25-30% discount on the boxed set ~.

There's this thing that businesses do, called "make a profit." I think you're confusing "make a profit" with "be my friend" or "give me some cool stuff for free/at a discount."

Please explain why you won't buy the season on DVD at full price. You're a loyal fan, are you not?

Then, if they play their cards right, as a loyal fan I can buy the entire series on DVD for $25 including S&H since I already paid $40-$60 for the series.

You don't think the "loyal fan[boys]" aren't already ready to give up their 85 bones for the season set? Sadly, they are, so your scheme to get your copy at a cheaper price won't hold water from a balance sheet standpoint.

Let me ask you something: why not go in with two friends and swap the disks around your group? That way, you get 69% "off" and you get the use of the whole set.

Starship Troopers, anyone?

[Altanar]

Anyone else immediately think of those Starship Trooper commercials? "Would you like to know more?"

Capture

[HTH NE1]

Actually, I will occasionally analog-capture a commercial from the TiVo to my computer if it is particularly good. Or laughably bad. The last one I did was the GE "green/seafoam shirt".

But from my past experience, these interactive features throw a graphic up on the screen. You can clear it (at times only temporarily) from the screen with the Clear button, but the capture is already marred by then. But so far ads that have done this haven't been worth keeping.

Re:MTV plays videos?

[DoddyUK]

Different story over here in Britain. MTV has no music videos (Apart from on TRL), but we have a whole crapload of other MTV channels to make up for it, like MTV Hits for pop, MTV2 which plays rock videos almost all day, MTV Base, MTV Dance and so on. Glad to see we Brits get it better for once :)

Does advertising really work anymore?

[notbob]

Lets be honest, how do we find 99.9% of our products?

We search for what we want or we stumble upon it in a store.

Rarely does a TV commercial catch me or a google adwords ad.

Oh and google adwords is evil! We signed up to advertise our site
http://www.pass--drug--test.com/

And it didn't meet content guidelines for adwords, so not just saying no to adwords, they ripped us out of google completely including the google directory when all we wanted to do was advertise and we'd gotten half our hits from google for last several years.

Some pay back for trying to give them money on to advertise on how to pass a drug test.

Now for the open source version

[Animats]

Now we need an open source, peer to peer replacement for Tivo. When you see a commercial, you push the "commercial" button to skip it. This uploads the info that the current content is a commercial. In a few seconds, there's a consensus that there's a commercial on, that info is both sent out and stored, and the commercial is skipped on everyone's system, now and forever.

"Thumbs up" and "Thumbs down" info can also be aggregated, to provide ratings others can use. This drives a blog system, so you can go on and discuss what's good and what sucked. That's also useful as a way to make consensus corrections to the TV schedule, since the free sources of that info can be a little off.

The fastest and most accurate commercial-button pushers get listed on a web site as high scorers.

Re:I'd like another button..

[Shakrai]

In the same vein, I'd like a button that tells them "This is the dumbest commercial I've ever seen...I will never buy this product and you need to fire your Ad agency."

It's kind of odd that on Slashdot I don't hear any discussion about the technology behind this advertising system. I hear a lot of complaining about the advertisements themselves but nobody asking how TiVo does this.

How does my TiVo know when the commercial it wants me to rate is airing? Do they download a database with the exactly time and channels of the commercials they are doing this for? That doesn't seem likely -- a sports game or news broadcast doesn't have set airtimes/commercial lengths and you can't pin a commercial down to an exact airtime.

So if it isn't downloading a list with times then how does it work? Is there some sort of closed captioning code embedded in the commercial that the TiVo understands? Or is there another way of placing codes in analog cable/over the air broadcast?