Slashdot Mirror
TiVo to Measure Ad-Skipping
jaredmauch writes "USA Today is reporting that TiVo will measure how many users skip ads of roughly 20k random users. This follows Nielsen Ratings service providing individual commercial ratings. Overall this is expected to reduce the cost of advertisements on television and perhaps make them more on-topic? I'd consider providing feedback (thumbs-up/down) to ads if it'd make those that are no longer relevant to me go away." I'm kinda surprised they don't have this data already. I mean, weren't they able to track the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction a few years ago?
I hope they use a doubleint.
Many people skip commercials on Tivo, it is one of the selling points. Now they are going to track the who, what, and when people ff skip the commercials?
"During the initial rollout, TiVo will not provide personal, demographic data on the sample group."
And after this, where is this data going to go?
"Rogers declined to project how much revenue the new division might generate, although he says, "It's an important part of the overall model."
Oh I see. If they can proove that one ad is watched more than another (given demographics) commercial prices will go up/down?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
All they really need to do is report on the number of subscribers, really.
Who in the *hell* wants to waste their time sitting in front of commercials, anyway? We put up with it from the early days of TV because once you bought the box, it was a 'free' service. Only now many (most?) of us pay, sometimes rather significant amounts of money, in order to bring a signal and service package into our homes. Why *anyone* should feel entitled to my eyes and attention in order to try and sell me on their crappy products really escapes me.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
So it looks like more beer commercials, and / or scantily clad women in our future. ...
I, for one, welcome our chauvinistic, alcohol-swilling, dynamically delivered advertisement overlords.
Maybe they will wait until after dinner to run those anti-diarrhea ads. To be fair there are clever ads out there, it's just that they rarely actually make me more likely to buy something. I've made up my mind about Coke versus Pepsi, and Brittany Spears isn't changing it!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
With ABC trying to prevent fast-forwarding through commercials, it seems a bit pointless to keep track how many have been skipped.
I'm kinda surprised they don't have this data already.
They do. The difference here is that they intend to sell it to one or more third parties.
-Adam
Do they really need to conduct a survey/study? Besides being able to time-shift your viewing, skipping commercials is what makes Tivo/DVR's worth the price... Nobody wants to see commercials, end of study. Duh.
I guess I'm confused about how the TiVo units work, but I don't understand how they even plan to measure who is fast-forwarding/skipping commercials? How will they track this? Does the TiVo actually phone home with your logs of what you record/skip/rewind from the DVR? How would they filter between skipping commercials, and skipping crappy programming? Wouldn't it all look the same to TiVo?
VOTE!
Why are advertisers interested in paying for ads that people aren't interested in?
Surely, if they helped TiVO become mainstream and omnipresent, they'd be able to target their advertisement dollars better, but until they do, they're only going to know about a bunch of geeks think about their ads, not necessarily the least useful cross-section of their viewers, but probably the least forgiving.
So why do they [the advertisers] fight TiVO every chance they get?
My being-a-tivo-owner understanding of their current tracking is that they can track something specifically if they know about it. For instance on some tv show promos it'll pop up a little "hit thumbs up to record" message, but only on a small few of them. The same goes for a small number of commercials, "Press thumbs up for a special deal from BowFlex". So if they know about something specifically they can track it, like the superbowl half time. So I'm guessing they don't have all this info such that they could do it, until now.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
I skip the commercials by leaving the room; have developed quite a sixth-sense/phenomenal internal 2 min. timer.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
The idea of hitting the thumb up/down buttons during commercials is a good one. I'd watch commercials just to thumb-down-bomb the annoying ones. A moderation system for commercials. I like. With feedback to the advertisers, the "you got a Dell" dude would never have gotten famous enough for me to hear reports about his dumbass drug habits. That idea alone makes this Good For Humanity.
If they use this information intelligently and anonymously, I don't mind.
I watch everything via TiVo, and my wife still channel surfs conventionally but uses it a lot. Do we skip over, say, 95% of all commercials as a result? Yes. Do we wait to watch things that are on now to build up a commercial-eating buffer? Yes.
And yet... when my co-workers talk about a commercial, I have either still seen it, or it's on a channel/timeslot I don't watch. And there are commercials that we actually go back to watch. Admittedly, most of those are "Next on Stargate!"-type commercials, but there are exceptions. There's the "your dreams are waiting for you" ad campaign going on which we think is kind of funny, and we sort of hope they turn it into a series, for instance.
I know ad execs just see us skipping commercials, but I think the total effectiveness is about the same as ever, and for the commercials we actually go back to see, greater than ever. (Even though I'm not in the market for the sleep product.) If they use this information intelligently, I wouldn't mind it so much; it'd actually have a positive effect.
Of course, that is one damn big if, no?
(Oh, and de-anonymize the stats and I'll build a MythTV box. Right now it's not worth it to me, but it would be then. The recent usability test that it did well on turned my head; I've been assuming it would be the usual Open Source interface disaster.)
I think the bigger part of this story is that TiVo wants to change their privacy policy to collect more demagraphic info about what you're doing. i.e. your clicks won't be so anonymous any more. From the NYTimes article about this:
For now, TiVo will not be able to tell advertisers anything about the demographics of the audience it measures. The privacy policy of the service allows it to gather data about viewing habits, but not any personal information. Mr. Juenger [TiVo VP of Audience Research] said TiVo hoped to find a way to change that by the end of the year.
The current TiVo Privacy Policy says repeatedly that all the data collected is anonymous. I guess that will have to change.
In the end it's all about money. TiVo needs to make more money. They're trying to do more with the watching data they already collect. And they want to collect more data to make it more valuable.
> Overall this is expected to reduce the cost of advertisements on television
Well, reduce the overall cost of adverts, but increase the cost of the first 3 seconds of the first advert to compensate for the fact that that's about as much of them anyone's likely to see.
If they make it impossible to skip ads I'll simply dump the whole show onto a PC and skip the ads there. I'm sure a standard that allows users to download an advert template for a given broadcast of a show would very quickly turn up and allow automatic skipping.
Maybe advertisers could fund the development of the shows instead, and make their money back from backing popular programs? Who knows - perhaps the advertisers will then be associated with some form of good, instead of being responsible for those annoying breaks in your entertainment?
Algerath
While a sub one percent click through rate on banner ads may seem anemic, it is going to start looking a lot better once media folks realize how little their expensive TV ads are watched (and by whom). Too bad they can't count the ads that are not skipped, but not watched, either -- the only time I don't skip an ad is when I leave the room.
I've had a ReplayTV for a few years now. It's gotten to the point where I can't stand to watch live TV... not just because of commercials, but because you can't skip past the suck that's sometimes even in good shows (a bad interview on the Daily Show, for example).
The problem is, you actually do miss out when you don't see *any* commercials. Things like announcements of new series you might like, or two hour specials of a show you already watch. Not to mention I'd have no idea how to use HeadOn.
Coke or Pepsi?
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
Considering the value of this information, it would be nice if the monthly cost of the TiVo service were reduced for subscribers as a result.
1. Tivo tracks how many ads get skipped and by who
2. Ad agencies know how much less the ads are worth now and demand networks lower prices because they're delivering less.
3. Networks pull the leashes on their well paid congressional delegation to fix this with legislation.
3. If legislation doesn't work then they pay Tivo to disable skipping the commercial, or have a special code which drops the viewer out of fast forward at the beginning of each commercial block.
Is there any outcome of this that would be considered good? They're actually making MS Media Center look good. And driving me more and more towards building my own MythTV box.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I am not a tivo user but I thought the point of tivo was to skip commercials. Doesn't it already skip commercials automatically? I have a mythtv setup here and i know i can set it to automatically skip commercials (what it thinks are commercials).
Because brand identity and recognition is important to successful marketing. Its not good enough (from a marketing perspective) to hit just the people interested in your product/brand *now*. It's important to hit the people who might be interested *later*. This is why most successful marketing campaigns are not one-ff pieces, they are often multi-year campaigns.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I understand that the advertisers would like to know, but this report is going to be ugly, IYKWIM. I for one have not watched a commercial for weeks, I only stop if I see some superhot chick or something really compelling by accident during skipping. After all, one of the major reasons people by a DVR is to be able to skip commercials. The mere assumption of advertisers that people watch more than a tiny amount of commercials after the purchase of a DVR shows how clueless they are (or maybe it's wishful thinking).
Yeah, since I don't think TiVo would be able to interpret when you change the channel, turn off the TV, mute the volume and open a book or otherwise get around these stupid restrictions as skipping ads. :)
I hope along with this they are gathering data on people rewinding to watch ads a second time, or coming back later just to view an ad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If the data were no longer anonymous, we could have a contest to see who maintains a 100% (or closest to it) advertisement avoidance. Think of the thrills, the drama... They could even make a reality TV show out of it.
Disclaimer: I FF through 100% of commercial crap.
Dear god I hope this means I can get a bunch of commercials with babes in bikinis in place of the ones about feminine hygiene someday soon. As much as I fear / despise companies collecting data on me I don't forsee advertising ceasing to exist anytime soon. If I'm going to be subjected to it I hope I get at least get some eye candy instead of, well, feminine hygiene products.
There should be some sort of button labeled "I'm a 20-something male living alone, switch to inappropriate-for-family commercials now." on every remote.
Haiku for you!
I don't understand why they don't just offer a tier of service for those that want NO adverts whatsoever. I'm sure most of us would be happy to pay more for such a service. That way, the advertisers only reach people who WANT to be reached and the broadcaster/service provider recoups income lost from those "get lost" subscribers in the form of higher fees. That might even get me to watch "regular TV shows" again. At this juncture, TV is so pollluted with adverts that I really only get cable so I have access to a broadband internet connection and cheap phone service.
Cheers,
i dont care what commercial is on the tube, i WILL skip it!, i'll wait 15-20 minutes into a show just so i can skip all the freggin commercials !!!!!!!
Why would they roll this out during the Summer rerun season? My TiVos are sitting practically idle, only just now picking up new episodes on Sci-Fi Channel, one anime episode a week on Cartoon Network, and recording The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Réport, and they're accumulating unwatched.
Instead I'm finally getting through a backlog of unwatched DVDs, and not via the TiVo with the DVD drive.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Guys, make sure not to skip everything except scantily clad woman and beer commercials. She may come home one night only to find that every commercial break has nothing but scantily clad women during her tivo'd sex and the city or grey's anatomy commercial breaks!
Of course it's obvious people are skipping commercials, but the value here is in the information about what ads are more likely to FFed, how the timing and relevance affects the numbers, etc.
Sure, if "Would you like TiVo to send anonymized data?" with a yes/no answer is a hack. Prove how l33t you are. Get on that shit.
Anon stats, not a problem.
... I will find myself at dealdatabase and other such sites waiting for the smart people to disable that "feature" for me.
IF that then pisses off network admins and they disable fast forward, or put small commercials INTO the fast forward...
hacking the tivo was once worth it to get a lot of extra functionality out of the box. Tivo saw this and build almost everything I wanted into the software (eventually) so I un-hacked it and have been running for quite a while (other than LARGE hd)... but mess with the ad skip (Select play select 30 select) and it will be re-hacked REALLY quick.
if we know for sure it's coming ahead of time the update can be blocked too... This should be watched very closely
I seem to remember something about there being a flag in the TV signal that identifies commercials, but my quick search brings up nothing related to that. I did, however, find this nugget on Nielsen's site...
http://www.NielsenMedia.com/WhatRatingsMean
drink beer, and let the water run the mill
The current TiVo Privacy Policy says repeatedly that all the data collected is anonymous. I guess that will have to change.
Not necessarily. Sure "White males aged 18-25" is a demographic, but so is "Regular viewers of Battlestar Galactica." Arguably, the latter is a more useful demographic to TV advertisers, and it doesn't require revealing personal information.
Of course, I have no doubts that TiVo and the scummy advertisers will look at it that way. They'll want to know age, gender, and how often you floss too, just because they're advertisers.
I'm an intern at a software company that produces the software that runs the majority of cable networks. So I hav ebeen hearing a lot about this issue lately. The problem is that advertisers feel they are paying for less than they are actually getting. Which is resulting in lower demand for ads this year and also lower cost of Ads. There has been an industry wide push to get Digital Video Recorders(DVR) to count the skips so that advertisers know how many viewers they are actually getting. Tv ads are sold based on the number of eyeballs expected to watch. The network then has to make up for any discrepancy(usually issue free ad time). The issue up for debate is how to count the DVR views. The networks want all DVR downloads counted as ratings, the Advertisers don't want any counted. I think what we are seeing here is a compromise between the Networks and major advertising agencies. As much as we all hate ads, someone has to pay for the TV broadcast. Either you let the advertisers pay in exchange for watchign there crap or you pay even more to watch TV.
"Data will include the number of people who saw the spot and when it was viewed. " If I Tivo something and never watch it, will that count as being viewed? If I am watching something live, will that count? How about when the TV is off, but the Tivo is recording? How will they know if I am actually sitting in front of it? What about the second Tivo that I have that isn't even hooked up to a TV, just used to catch the oddball programs that conflict (pre DT Tivo)? Seems like this is another case of the data being able to support any story you want to tell...
I would be happy to provide feedback to advertizers on which ads I skip, in exchange for not preventing me from skipping them. If they want me to view the ad, then they need to write better and not repeat the ad 10 times during one show.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Dear Sir/Maam:
According to our PVR statistics, this month you skipped 4.6 hours of televised advertising. This falls well above the nuisance threshold of 0.5 hours, and deprives our advertising customers of significant value. Accordingly, we feel compelled to refund $14.53 to them for your share of unviewed advertising. We are passing this cost along to you, along with handling, billing, and maintenance fees for a total of $17.00, which will be included in your next cable/satellite bill.
Thank you very much,
Your TV distribution executive
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I can think of plenty times that i've started watching something on tivo and then switched off the tv to go do something else. I'm sure that counts as me having viewed the ads.
:)
What about the times that you are watching live tv.
I half wonder if tivo have statistics that show them not doing much damage
The program sponsorship screens that appear at the start and end of commercial breaks are surely going to go up in price though.
When watching the last season of CSI on Five (a UK channel) it was sponsored by a company called Toucan (a telco I'd never even heard of prior to watching CSI). However because I used my DVR to skip the ad breaks - I used the toucan clips to figure out when I needed to switch back to normal speed playback. Normally I overshoot a little at 64x FFWD and have to go back and end up watching those sponsor clips everytime though - so the impact of only being hit with that brand and no other advertising through the course of a program - must make those sponsorship screens increasingly valuable in a world where hard disk recorders are taking off fast.
I think it's a little of both, but the industry is more concerned with the male/female, age range, and possibly the race of the viewer more than that they are a sci-fi fan. There's a limited amount of stuff to sell to sci-fi fans; certain movies might be advertised more, or video games, or even promos for other shows.
However, gender/age/race demographics are used to sell just about everything else. Women aren't interested in the Gillette Mach X razor, and men aren't interested in "secret: strong enough for a man, made for a women," and some ages aren't certainly appropriate for advertisements from your local tattoo parlor.
In other words, age and gender are a lot more valuable.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The real initial question is: Why would an advertiser want to pay money to reach someone not within their target market? The answer: They don't. The follow-up question: Why then don't advertisers use these available technologies to tackle this issue? The answer: They are behemoth, archacic, and stupid.
I expect product placement advertising to get more an more blatant.
At some point, instead of seeing the Mac laptop prominently placed in a scene within your favorite show, you will see SNL-style commercials.
An actor will just turn to the camera in the middle of the show and say, "Looks like someone forgot their Product X this morning," or "That's why 4 out of 5 doctors recommend..." Then the show will keep going.
Lawrence Welk did this for Geritol every show. Leno does it now from time to time.
You'll see it start out clever and funny, then get worse and worse.
If viewers skip commercials, weave commercials more tightly into the show.
If they revise the privacy policy to allow for that, I'm cancelling service. I refuse to be spied on -- TiVo was all about ME controlling my own TV experience. Now it looks as if TiVo will control what I watch.
Will this tell them Taylor Hicks' 15 minutes are up?
when I first read "individual commercial ratings" I thought that maybe the "individual" was the person -- Tivo providing rating per person on how many ads you sit through.
Now there is another salvo in the arms race for our attention... companies rating how compliant we are to listening to their messaging. Individualized trackable ads. hmmmm. If you are a good boy and sit quietly and listen to the ads, maybe we'll give you a nice discount on the service we got you to think you need.
Lost in the discussion are the responsibility of the two other providers in the content merry go round: The content producer and the advertiser. If the content providers are more reasonable about the type and quantity of ads they include, people might be less inclined to skip commercials. A single 30 second spot isn't worth reaching for the remote, but four minutes is more than enough to justify the reach. And if commercials were a bit more entertaining, AND NOT LIKE THOSE HORRIBLE OXY-CLEAN COMMERCIALS THAT ONLY HAVE ONE VOLUME, then consumers might be more tolerant.
Right now I see a pretty one-sided relationship where Tivo is the bad guy and the consumer is supposed to lump whatever insult the provider and advertiser can cobble together. Start thinking of your viewers and give them some consideration as human beings with a certain dollar value attached to their time or expect the war to continue. Tivo is smart enough to know that if they don't give consumers what they want, consumers will get it somewhere else. Many, many programs available via DVD and download. Start loading those with commercials and consumers will quit buying them, too. We have enough ads bombarding us from everywhere as it is. We will win this war.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This really shouldn't be a shocker - Tivo has been saying all along that they need to find different streams of revenue and that the subscriber model isn't exactly working for them.
Personally - I would deal with the commercials in exchange for watching/following the shows that I want when I want. The best way for me would be to tell Tivo what kinds of things I'm interested in and have them shuffle appropriate commercials my way. I could see a Tide commercial a thousand times and it will never motivate me to call my wife at home and make sure she gets Tide the next time she steps out. Maybe even have an easy way to tell it who is watching - so that it can target. For example: You select a show to record and one of the options allows you to choose "Me, Wife, Wife&Me, Family" before I select "add season pass". Kids shows could just default to kids. Then, when I am watching a show, I'll gladly watch the commercials.
This is all similar to those ad packs that we get in the mail from time to time. I personally don't find them annoying because I can flip through them and stop on the ones that mean something to me.
Anyway - someone has to pay for the shows and there is no sense taking up commercial time if the person watching isn't paying attention.
www.wildpad.com
Old Rule: When customers didn't like your products, you made your products better.
New Rule: When they don't like your commercials, make 'em watch it!
Perhaps, but you don't have to get that directly from TiVo. You already have demographics for each show. The networks provide that. So if you know that (for example) 70% of viewers of Battlestar Galactica skipped your ad, and you know that Battlestar Galactica is mostly viewed by White Males 18-25, you can do the math yourself.
It's funny that the bulk of people are always behind the curve. Media conglomerates have gone so far as to try to get PVRs legislated out of existence so people can't conveniently skip commercials. Now, they're trying to figure out which commercials get skipped, and hopefully it will lead to the truth: people do not watch commercials that are not interesting unless they are intoxicated. Well, or if they've already been lulled into a passive, receptive alpha state by their 60Hz idiot box. Hopefully we'll get away from 60Hz someday (even a lot of LCDs refresh at 60Hz, although I sincerely doubt it can have the same result as the TV; primary output is at a higher frequency than that.)
If they read the figures correctly, I am sure that it will tell them that if commercials are entertaining and engaging, and minimally patronizing and annoying, then people will be more likely to watch them. Hopefully they will respond accordingly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I own a TiVo and I skip commericals all the time. Though every once and a while a commerical will catch my eye and I'll watch it. In fact that last commerical that I liked was a VW rabbit commerical. I watched it, backed it up and called my wife into the room to see it. If TiVo can report on that kind of watching then maybe they'l have some data worth selling. In genreal, I skip commericials because the same one will be in the be shown again in the next commerical break. I feel the advertisers are fighting against the law of diminishing returns. The first time I saw it, I was entertained. The nth time I saw it, I was bored. Stop boring me.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
Tivo is great and this should help make ads better. Advertisers can see what is being watched and what isn't and modify their ads accordingly. But in the end we still don't have what we need.
How about we go away from the channel model to focusing on the content? I don't care if it's on HBO or Showtime or Cinemax. A movie is a movie and a show is a show. I subscribe to the channels because they have content I like, but I don't care about the channel. I have no brand loyalty when it comes to my tv habits. What I want is quality content. I also really like on demand viewing which is why I use my dvr so much. I don't care what day and time my favorite shows are on because I won't be watching then anyway. I have my own schedule and I do things when I want. I think most people are like me so why not offer a service that truly reflects what people want?
Why not offer an on demand service for all content? You pay so much a month to watch unlimited tv and you choose what you watch and when you watch it. Maybe rotate the content each month. Shows could still have air dates but then from that point forward you can watch whenever. Basically it's just one big dvr that records everything and you watch what you want, when you want it. But here's the thing, offer two versions, one with commercials and one without. The service provider will drop in the commericals for that version or show the non-commercial version if you pay a bit more.
I pay just over $100 for my DISH service and I'd be willing to pay $150 for something like I just described. Then again I basically get that via BitTorrent. I download what I want, commerical free, and watch it whenever I want. And for all intents and purposes it's free.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
I would be willing to go further: I am ok with being forced to watch an ad as long as i'm allowed to skip the ad everytime it shows up again during the taping session. I would also like to be able to click a button on my remote control to let me rate the ad. The numbers 1-9 come to mind since they are already on the controller. Then similar ads to those that I rated as low won't be shown to me, or even better - go back to the advertisers and let them learn what really doesn't work for a certain demographic.
What could be more informative than "HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead! HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead! HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead!"
Nothing wrong with Cardigans!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
We'll lets see. If the program I want to see is on while I'm at work, I'll end up skipping all the ads (and the content too :-).
But if I TiVo it, there's at least a chance I'll see some of the ads.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I think the story summary misses the point (shocking, I know). It's not about Tivo measuring how many people skip ads, it's about measuring which ads people skip. Sure, Tivo users skip most of the ads, but there are some that they watch (I recall hearing statistics that people skip about 2/3 of the ads, but I can't cite a source). For the ad agencies that create these commercials, this information is gold. These agencies currently rely on focus groups and surveys that measure "brand recognition", but that kind of information is still very nebulous.
Imagine you're trying to decide between two ad agencies. One shows you some statistics from these type of surveys, indicating indirectly that their ads are failry succesful. The other shows you hard numbers indicating that their ads are watched through to the end twice as often as their competitor's. That's a pretty compelling argument.
Ad agencies can also use this data to determine which of their campaigns, art directors, or copywriters are more succesful. It's like going from profiling your app using a stopwatch to using a real profiling tool that gives you millisecond timings for individual functions. Your data are much more granular and much more direct, allowing you to really optimize your approach.
Honestly, as long as they keep the personal information out of this, I see it as a good thing. There are certain commercials that I'm sure everyone hates, and the faster those can be identified by ad agencies and their clients, the faster they get off the air and away from my eyeballs.
Who modded this as offtopic? If it is filmed in slow-motion, then it will appear like a normal commercial when fast-forwarded through. To quote Mr. Dynamite: "idiot."
Head on - apply directly to the forehead...Head On - apply directly to the forehead....Head On - apply directly to the forehead.
...and it's free!
With ad spots so expensive, I have to wonder why they don't go back to live advertising from the early days of television. Keep the material original.
...mirror it for free directly to the NSA's data warehouse -- you know, to assist in constructing the Citizen Advertising Preference Habituanalysis Profile® that is the key to defeating terror in the twenty-first century.
Pi Ran Out
The problem with collecting descrete data (versus anonymous viewer data), is that the more exact you get, the more chance you have of truly blowing it (since anyone could be watching a given TV).
... ... at least until they put a camera on the TV ... and that will be the end of anyone wanting one.
When you live in a household with three people, 1 Male, 2 Females, of various ages and interests, agregating based on the house MIGHT make sense. Agregating based on the show watched DEFINATELY makes sense.
If my wife watches All My Children and decides to FF through the commercials, it means they are meaningless to her. If I watch Eureka (on Sci-Fi), and decide to watch the Station ID spots because they are new and interesting, and that gets me to watch a commericial or two (because I'm in a good mood and the commericals mesh), the system can draw inferences about the ads for the show, but now about who is watching what
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Because brand identity and recognition is important to successful marketing
That's a load of crap. Marketing is successful if it leads to conversions. It's unsuccessful if it doesn't.
Some of the best marketing is done by getting buy-in without brand identity or recognition- Wal*Mart Equate, for example, doesn't use the Wal*Mart logo, and the name is almost unknown- even to the people buying it. They buy it simply because they don't recognize the name, because they know that it's the same thing as the drug with the name that they do recognize.
Now. Sometimes brand identity and recognition leads to conversions, and I think what you're trying to say is that advertising is one part of a marketing campaign, but not the only one. I hope you really don't mean to say that brand identity and recognition is what advertising is about, and I really hope you don't mean that advertising is equal to marketing.
But back to the topic: In reality, however, if someone skips your ad, it didn't contribute to anything except a waste of your money.
What's probably more accurate is that they're ignorant to why advertising may have worked in the past, and they have forgotten how to accurately measure it. As a result, I'm pretty sure advertisers believe that if they just get their ads watched more, they'll receive more conversions, and that means more money.
Unfortunately, it's just not true. Advertising is about informing people, and if people don't want that information, you should make every effort to pay less so that you're only spending for the information you're actually providing.
Actually, that's kind of how the Internet works.
That's the entire nature of Tivo. If you want to control your own experience, buy a stand alone DVR which is better, cheaper, and doesn't require a stupid subscription. By the way, privacy policies (all of them) aren't worth the paper they're printed on. You do make a good point about how the reasons to subscribe to Tivo are getting fewer all the time.
I quit watching cable TV and going to movie theaters since 2000.
You want to know why?
TOO MUCH ADVERTISING!
I am sick of more time delegated to ads and less to programs. I am sick of product placement in shows and movies. I am sick of banner ads consuming the margins of my TV. I am sick of "infomercials". I am sick of movie/show commercials disguised as "interviews". I am sick of sitting through twenty minutes of ads in a theater waiting for the movie I paid $10 to see. I am sick of paying $$$ for cable TV with more and more ads and less content as the valuable channels are pushed into upper tiers to draw more green from my wallet.
I am not alone and this is the group that the TiVo survey will miss. I don't sub to TiVo because it offers nothing of value to me. I threw my cable TV and movies out of my house and I discovered a real world out there that reflects nothing like what Hollywood wants me to see.
Get off the ad revenue bandwagon that floats your boat, and you will stop losing customers. It's that simple.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
In Soviet Russia, your TiVo watches YOU!
"Scud Storm!" -- Jeremy of PurePwnage.com
Yeah, i read the article earlier and posted this on my blog. But whatever.
I was just reading an article about advertisers getting all bent out of shape because folks are skipping ads like crazy on their TiVo/DVR. Well, duh! They're skipping the commercials because they've gotten so annoyingly predominant -- it's nearly to the point where it feels that you're watching more commercials than scheduled program.
And you may be wondering what this is really about. Well, I just wanted to publish what I thought of as the next logical step in the DVR revolution. Advertisers will like it, and it wouldn't be that hard for the DVR people to code it up:
Abstract:
A method of delivering advertisements to a viewer of DVR-recorded media while the viewer is fast-forwarding or fast-rewinding through advertisements or the main video program.
Claim:
1) a system for temporarily reducing the viewing size of video playback during a fast-forward or fast-rewind viewing of a pre-recorded or cached video program or advertisement
2) a method of receiving encoded information within an advertisement, or main video program
3) a method of decoding the received information into:
3a) textual information, to be displayed to the viewer,
3b) linkage information, to be displayed as a shortcut, or hyperlink, in order to view more information,
3c) or, additional information such as (but not limited to) short musical phrases or small graphical icons
4) a system for overlaying text and graphics as received into the screen space vacated by claim 1.
Technical:
Advertisers and television execs are increasingly frustrated by the ability of a viewer to skip over their ads, reducing the take rate for said services. This patent would allow an advertiser to make sure that their message was still being seen by a "tivo-ised" audience, by simultaneously reducing the screen real-estate available to video playback during fast-forward, or fast-reverse; then displaying textual and graphical information into the newly-created blank space.
This would allow targeted advertisements within a broadcast program to appear while a user is fast-forwarding or fast-rewinding through the program (as they might in order to catch-up to where they had left off in a previous viewing). This would also allow an alternate method of viewing the intra-program advertisements during the so-called "ad-skip" fast-forward.
Well, I tried to draft it up like a patent. And now it's published. Really, it's the next logical step, and hopefully advertisers will come flocking to my door wanting to use my invention. And I'll be rich! Muahahah!
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
Short for promotional spots. They are run to fill in the space that was meant for commercials, but they just didn't sell the time slot (show sucks, bad salesmen, whetever). You can't have black holes, so might as well use the time for something.
TiVO already has a partnership with Nielsen (don't not ask me how I know, I am not allowed to say) that tracks specific TiVo user accounts (with their informed consent). Basically, Nielsen is uisng TiVo as a new PeopleMeter to track TV watching habits. The consent agreement is for a one year term.
Fine. As long as I get to metamod your ratings.
...have a DVR that connects to a telephone jack!
There was a survey and study a few years ago on ad retention of TIVO users. People remembered the products at about the same rate as those who didn't have TIVO. And these are people who fast forward, like I do. Sounds crazy? A couple of reasons.
1. You have to actively pay attention when you fast forward to hit the show. This means mentally clicking off the product you are fast forwarding. Seperating show from commercial means actively engaging in the 2 seconds that 30 second commercial is whizzing by. So many are visiually dirven, that you get their jist, even if it is just the tag for the product.
2. Most people---and I did it in the pre-DVR days---spent the commercial breaks flipping around to other channels or checking out the guide, that's the price of our ADD culture. Some friends of mine who don't have a DVR literally mute or turn off the TV for two minutes when the break hits. TIVO users aren't flippers.
3. People with DVR's aren't really watching less TV per week, but they are watching more programs because they are skipping ads. This means more exposure and repetition of ads, therefore those crafty lil ads get seen more, not less.
The smart advertiser would make ads that embrace the fast forward TIVOs---more and longer graphics and tags. Hell, I keep waiting for the ad that is so slowed down it looks at normal speed at two arrows. The audio could even make fun of it and TIVO users.
People think they are beating the ad-driven system with TIVO. They're not, really, but we do have more time to watch more programs.
Before DVRs were even a twinkle in their mother's eye, I didn't watch commercials. Ya know how? I was an old-fashioned channel surfer... an ad came on, I changed the channel. If the show was good enough for me to come back to, I'd try to remember, but honestly tv shows have such thin plots it didn't matter if I missed an entire segment, I could still pick up whenever I came back to it.
So now that I have a DVR I actually watch the entirety of shows, but measuring the number of commercials I skip is pointless because I never saw them to begin with... the advertisers aren't losing any money, they just now have a scape goat (well, they really should blame the remote) and a reason to lower how much they're paying for commercials.
This is about as dumb as the attempts on copy protection for CDs, why does having new technology make widely used practices (making dupes or mix tapes) suddenly a bad thing?
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
You're right. I'd like to also point out that Tivo ratings would be worthless... it's all in my name (two Tivos), yet I probably watch TV the least in my house.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Hmmm, it might have interesting results. Maybe you could allow profiled ads so that ads for things you like (electronics, perhaps funny ads) could be shown, while skipping the annoying McDonalds or tampax ads. Better yet, let people share "ad-lists" wherein you can rate the ads and then share them with people of similar mind... some commercials are actually pretty damn funny, enough so that people collect them and send them off to friends online.
If they didn't aggravate people maybe they wouldn't be skipped so much. They increase the volume of ads in comparison to your show. That is lame. Now I have a loud, obnoxious commercial that I will pick up the remote and skip rather than touch the volume. Not to mention, there will be 4-6 commercials sometimes rather than just a couple. Add in that some channels pour more commercials in than normal, leads to people who really don't want to watch them. Honestly, some of them are cool but there are too many. Cheers
TV is not now nor was it's primary intent ever to be first and foremost a way of entertaining people. The intent has always been to sell stuff, the way to sell stuff is to (hopefully) keep you entertained and amused long enough to sit through the advertising. Right from the get-go products were hawked by the same hosts that presented the various shows. If you want to be entertained without commercials read a book and let your mind create whatever commercial free images you want.
"weren't they able to track the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction a few years ago?"
Actually, I missed the wardrobe malfunction because of my DVR.
I like watching football with my DVR because I can fast forward through all the trivia that goes on between plays. I don't record the games because recording things without a definite end-time is always a nuisance. So when Superbowl Sunday came around, I just hit the "Pause" button and waited an hour or so until it built up enough a buffer.
When they got to the half-time show, I thought, "Well, I like Janet Jackson doing stuff from Rhythm Nation, so I'll watch that. But Justin Timberlake? Who cares?!" So whenever he showed up, I hit the fast forward button. When the "malfunction" occurred, I missed it completely. Show over, time to get back to the game!
It wasn't until afterwards that I heard of the problem and, by that time, I couldn't rewind to watch it again.
People act like TiVo's the only way to skip commercials. Wrong.
People have always skipped commercials. Is there anybody out there who honestly believes we're paying attention to the hemorrhoid cream add the six-hundredth time it runs?
In the beginning, you actually had to get up and leave the room to skip commercials. You went to the kitchen for a snack or something. Then came the remote volume control - you muted the ad.
If nothing else, I at least have a very good ability to just tune the noise out, not watch, not listen. I think most people do.
Even good ads are annoying after a few repetitions, and the more frequent the repetitions, the more annoying.
Do these fools actually believe there's a way to get us to watch the same ad over and over and over and over?
All these ADD, ADHD, inability to focus in kids stem directly from them spending hours in front of a TV.
How can children learn to pay attention to what's important with the constant barrage of shifting images and colors shouting at them from the n00b-tube?
Kids these days need some kind of a mandatory curricular training to teach them to concentrate. Perhaps a summer camp of sorts?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I only watch 15 minutes of TV during the course of 24 hours. 'get up in the morning and mull though 7 minutes of commercials (Usually trash) and watch 7 minutes of news, primarily to see what the weather will be for the day. Most of the "watching" involves the mute button on the remote. It seems more and more commercials require the assumption that their target audience has the IQ of a tomato.
Test it - write a short C program, build on VAX, UNIX, CRAY and Intel hardware. Use UNIX cc, Borland C++, etc. Sooner or later, you'll get a surprise. Don't believe me? Keep writing code which assumes these limits, you're in for an unpleasant surprise.
I wonder...can they change this on a unit with "lifetime service"...? Where there is nothing to cancel?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Since advertisers couldn't really care less WHAT you watched so much as they care WHO is watching, the latter is NOT more useful. "White males aged 18-25" has significance because it is correlated to spending habits, disposable income, etc. No one knows what a "regular viewer of Battlestar Galactica" may purchase, how much money they have, etc.
They do not want to know your age, gender, etc. etc. just because they are evil, scummy, nosy bastards. Advertisers want to know that information so they do not waste time and money showing and advertisement to the wrong person (e.g. vaginal yeast infection cream to 13 year old boy.) Whether or not advertising actually influences purchasing habits is another issue.
I don't really care if they know what I watch. I think if anything it may improve what's on TV. Who knows it may keep some of those "brilliant but canceled" shows on the air for a scond season.
I think the worse side effect that tivo, or dvr's, will bring is product placement. Did anyone see "The Island", the most entertaining part of that movie was finding the product of the scene. And, when the credits finally started rolling.
As soon as they disable the 30 second skip hidden feature I'm defiantly gone.
Wrong. You do care if your condom ads are seen by eight year olds as opposed to twenty-five year olds. Without knowing the demographic associated with the show, you could end up beaming your ads into the retinas of people not about to buy your products.
Before you know it, tivo will be offering a 25% subscription discount to get the usual fools to wear a small blood pressure cuff on their dicks to feed back responses to individual ads.
I don't skip ads, but I don't watch them, either.
Even when I'm watching recorded T.V., ads are when I get up to get food from the kitchen, to put the dirty glass in the sink, to go to the bathroom, to check my email, and so on.
I'm so in the habit of making use of ad-time, that I don't even notice the breaks any more. But I also don't watch the ads.
Think of it as a compromise: You get to skip the ads, but we get to know which ads you are actively watching.
E.g. Nielsen requires you alert them every so often you settle for a channel to watch, by interacting with the remote.
Really? Cause I could have sworn I've already paid for that broadcast. If not, then what are my $80/month going towards? Hookers and blow? I'm sorry, but I paid for cable to get entertainment without advertising. The day I start paying to be advertised to is the day I put a sawed off shotgun in my mouth and pull the trigger (ie, never).
Nathan's blog
I know that, at least on my DirecTiVos, it is also tracking other information such as mute, volume up/down, TV power {on|off}. You can see it with an IR code scanner...it sends two sets of codes with every non-TiVo specific command -- one to the TV or receiver to perform the action, and one to the TiVo to log it. Kinda pisses me off because it makes the remote slower / less responsive to commands.
So I guess, in addition to knowing when you skip commercials while you are timeshifting, they also know when you're muting them live or changing channels on your OTA tuner (in my case)...
If Star Trek had the internet: Captain, we've received an IM from the romulans. "Surrender or be destroyed. LOL. o.O"
Solution: MythTV.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Depends upon your definition of "better". I have 2 Tis (with lifetime service) and a standalone hard drive/dvd recorder (because Tivo DVD recorders don't allow editing of recordings before burning to DVD nor writing to DVD multi-session). But it's FAR less usable than Tivos, even ignoring the fact that you have to program it "like a vcr". It corrupted my hard drive once, and has a few reproducible bugs that hang the system (that caused the corruption). I would have paid a lot more to have the Tivo interface _with_ these features I missed. Tivos have the reliability.. Plus the inability to delete a show while recording on the unit is a pain too.
Don't get me wrong, I also am ticked about the lack of lifetime service anymore.. Though personally, the multi-service price of ~$7/month is sounding less awful to me as time goes on (for a dual tuner S2, or hopefully the same price for S3 when it comes out). I'd still rather pay lifetime, and am watching various ebay auctions of lifetime gift cards.
Everyone who has any control over ads will skip, mute, or ignore them.
I pay for my TV service. If the advertisers object to my editing out their ads they can stick it.
I would much rather have standard definition TV without ads than high definition TV with adverts.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I have the best solution of all.... don't have a TV. I don't and I'm happy with that. I have hours of time to do things like read slashdot or talk with friends. Actually, my roommate does have a TV, but reception is crappy, and we only use it to watch DVDs.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Nobody wants to see commercials, end of study. Duh.
More accurately, nobody wants to watch uninteresting commercials, repeatedly, especially for products in which they are not interested.
Here are my typical ad-viewing habits. If I'm in a hurry, or watching a particularly engrossing portion of a program I will skill all commercials arbitrarily. Otherwise, it normally takes a particularly annoying or off-topic commercial (i.e. As a 20-something male, I don't want to sit through an ad for feminine hygiene products, adult diapers, etc.) to get me to reach for the remote and begin fast-forwarding the program. So: whether or not a particular ad gets viewed will depend on where the ad is placed in the program, and which other ads come before it in the commercial break.
Hopefully, this data will spur advertisers to advertise more appropriately vs. the shotgun approach we see now. If I have less reason to reach for the remote to skip the annoying commercials, I see that as a good thing. (I'm not betting that this will happen, however...)
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
All the neat toys they let me play with.
Because people *say* they aren't interested in your ad, but advertisers perceive that if they could *just* get that ad into their homes, people would change their mind.
Men *say* they don't want tampons. (and tampon ads) But when their wives/girlfriends sent them to the store to buy Kotex, if they've seen enough Tampax commercials, they might get confused and buy the wrong brand.
Extreme example, but it's a real phenomemon. People often say one thing, but when they are in the store, they act differently. Advertising tries to get into people's minds so they act the way the advertiser wants, not what the person wants or needs.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
For all anyone knows HeadOn could be a mind control device, or maybe just a way to see if people will buy shit and stick it to their head (probably says "Kick Me HARD" on the outside)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Anyone remember the ABC Discussions? Since ad-skipping is one of the main selling-points of TiVo equipment, I doubt they would go so far as to do that, but the lurking spectre of more authoritarian media enforcement never really goes away. Then again, maybe they want to sell the data to advertisers to generate some extra cash.
quia potentia mens mentis
I believe there's a historical precident regarding these "concentration camps" that I think we should consider.