TiVo Continues To Fast Forward Advertising Program

August 30th, 2006 Davis Posted in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, TiVo |

Over the last year and half, Tom Rogers has taken TiVo from being the scourge of the advertising community to it’s new darling in the industry. TiVo’s ability to measure how consumers react not only to programming, but to the ads themselves on a second by second basis in live time has given marketers a powerful communication tool in understand what makes an ad a hit or a flop early on. Despite all that has been written about TiVo ending advertising, they’ve done a pretty good job of forcing it’s evolution. Instead of trying to blast 30 second sound bytes to consumers, they’ve instead enabled consumers to opt into ads and are finding that they are not only watching them, but spending more time with the brands that they want to see.

At the start of the TV sweeps, TiVo’s Davina Kent gave a great podcast on the future of advertising and shortly later TiVo announced that they had signed a multi-million dollar advertising agreement with interpublic group. Following up with the success of this deal, TiVo set up their own audience measurement program to help provide the valuable feedback that marketing agencies so desperately crave. Some don’t like TiVo getting cozy with the advertisers, but I don’t mind as long as TiVo keeps control of the ads in consumer’s hands. When TiVo announced their Interpublic deal, Dave Zatz derided the agreement and worried that we’d see TiVo spam, but I really see these agreements more like banner ads then pop ups. It’s up to the consumer to click on the ad, otherwise you can just mentally block it out like we do other advertising.

In a yet another new development on the advertising front, TiVo is now selling an advertising life jacking to Omnicom Media Group. In a press release issued this morning Tom Rogers, TiVo’s CEO commented on the agreement.

“As the only truly DVR-based advertising solution available today, TiVo is at the forefront in helping advertisers engage the consumer while allowing subscribers to maintain control of their television entertainment experience . . . The partnership is all about working with the key advertisers within the OMD and PHD business units to embrace the biggest change in television viewing, consumers fast-forwarding through commercials.”

As TiVo’s subscriber base has swelled past 4 million households and with upcoming agreements with now Cox as well as Comcast, advertisers have really begun to take a closer look at partnering with TiVo instead of fighting with them. This benefits consumers because it opens up the possibility for consumers to provide feedback and it changes the economic relationship of advertising on TV. If TiVo gave me the option to thumbs up or down commercials that I see, I would glady not only watch those commercials, but interact with them so that they could then pass that data onto consumers. If marketers know that I want to kill that guy in the Mac ads, maybe they’ll stop producing such rubbish. On the other hand, if I see a commercial for that hot new iPod or Zune and have the option to see a longer demonstration along with the opportunity to buy it using my remote on a TiVo charge account, I would start purchasing goods and services from my couch in a heartbeat. Couch commerce is the way of the future and while TiVo’s advertising initives are still young, this new agreement with Omnicom Media Group is yet another important step for the company.