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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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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,
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.
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 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.
Often I stop a show and watch another, when I go back to the first show I skip to the point where I left off. They shouldn't force me to watch anything that I've seen already. And if they ever enforce people to watch commercials on something recorded, watch how fast I cancel my services and go back to seasons of shows on DVD. It's the only reason I have DVR is to watch shows at my time, and not to watch commercials.
Causing Chaos Everywhere,
Nik J.
The strange world of a loner, in a populous city, drowning in society
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?
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.'"
What could be more informative than "HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead! HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead! HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead!"
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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
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.
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.