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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?
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.
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?
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.
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
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 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.
You pay $50 a month for "basic" cable and they still dump ads on you. They make you pay for stuff that is nothing but ads (QVC, MTV).
I have even heard ads on XM recently on the music channels. Sat radio was founded on a no-ad policy, but they are sneaking in.
This is why projects like mythtv are important. Open source PVR technology. Problem is, next generation HDMI / Blue Ray / HD DVD won't let you save DRM material to your HD (AFAIK). You will get the broadcast HD unencrypted, but the cable will not be recordable.
I am sure the pirates will think of something, but I want to be able to skip commercials if possible.
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!
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