TiVo to Measure Ad-Skipping 261
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?
This won't take very long (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
They do. (Score:5, Insightful)
They do. The difference here is that they intend to sell it to one or more third parties.
-Adam
Blatantly obvious to even the most casual observer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This won't take very long (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This won't take very long (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the end result will be polarized... either companies will make ads that are entertaining/amusing to watch, or TiVo will start offering premium fees for advertizers so they can make their commercial un-skippable.
We've all seen DVDs that don't allow you to skip the previews in front of the main menu. Some actually let you fast-forward, but not skip over them. And granted, it's self-advertizing for the studio, but it's shameless enough that I'd fully expect that forced TV commercials will appear at some point in the near future.
Re:This won't take very long (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't capitalism in essence, really, "you are entitled to the world as long as you can pull it off"
If they use it intelligently, I don't mind (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
A: Profit!!! TiVo wants/needs more of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [tivo.com] 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.
I don't like it (Score:3, Insightful)
Algerath
Will make internet ads look good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This won't take very long (Score:5, Insightful)
hopeful (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Advert free service... (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheers,
Re:A: Profit!!! TiVo wants/needs more of it. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:This won't take very long (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree. When I had a Tivo, there were ads we liked and ones we didn't. The masterful Tivo roommates (Ken and Benjamin) would stop the full speed fast forward to watch the most brilliant or interesting ones, and then go back to skipping through the annoying ones. I mean, if you look at Apple.com's movie trailer site, or Sportcenter's site, there is an interest in watching commercials. Just not ones for Bernie & Phil bickering about dinette sets.
I think this a good idea for Tivo. If a good show had all genuinely good commercials (My favorite - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh97oYCJ-Ok [youtube.com]), I'd only skip things if I wanted to watch 2 hours of TV in one hour of time. In my deluded fantasies, commercials will get better when they see this research.
Re:Let's break this down.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe we'll find out that the commercial skip rate isn't near as high as everybody imagines. "People still sit and watch the Office as soon as it's on TV." Or something like that.
There is the potential for this to bring good news. I have a feeling the big-wigs think TiVo kills commercials entirely. If reality tells a different story, it should be logged.
As usual, most advertisers don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
It's called Bittorrent... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"I'd consider providing feedback (thumbs-up/dow (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Hey Hollywood, count this! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Fine (Score:3, Insightful)
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?