"One in five people who own a DVR like TiVo or ReplayTV say they never watch any commercials, according to a recent survey from Memphis-based NextResearch.
Numbers like that have provoked gloomy pronouncements from industry executives. Some even come close to accusing habitual ad skippers of theft....
Others are trying to turn the technology to their advantage. Coca-Cola has paid for advertising that appears on the screen of a ReplayTV user when a viewer pauses a program for more than a few minutes. Last week, Best Buy announced that it would embed electronic tags visible only to TiVo users in 30-second commercials featuring the singer Sheryl Crow it is running on MTV. Viewers can click on an icon to see 12 additional minutes of the Best Buy 'advertainment,' while TiVo records the continuing MTV programming so they can watch it later.
'We need to start to understand how we're going to have to reach our consumers with this new technology,' said Mollie Weston, a product manager for Best Buy's image advertising. 'It is going to force us to put advertisements out there that people are actually going to choose to watch.'
Indeed, advertisers take heart in data from TiVo that showed its viewers fast-forwarding through this year's Super Bowl and using the instant replay function for the Britney Spears Pepsi commercial more than any other segment besides the winning field goal.
Because DVR's are connected by a phone or high-speed Internet line from a viewer's home to a central server to get program schedules, some advertisers envision downloading commercials aimed at individual people based on information from databases compiled through other sources. Members of Purina pet clubs might get pet food commercials, for instance, while the owner of a BMW lease that is about to expire might get an advertisement on the automaker's new convertible.
'There's a lot of things that are going to start to change,' said Ira Sussman, director of research for Initiative Media North America, an advertising buyer whose clients include Maybelline and Home Depot. 'We're going to have to start thinking more about the importance of product placement within programs, placing more relevant, highly targeted messages. But we see it as a glass half full....'
'We've trained people that you can buy things at 3 in the morning in the nude on the Internet and make a call to anyone from anywhere on a cellphone, and the idea that CBS is going to determine when I watch `CSI' flies in the face of that trend,' said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research. 'TV networks are going to have to figure out how to make money from a TV viewer that is not nailed to the chair waiting for the commercial to end.' " [NY Times: Technology]
Taking exception to the fact that Kellner did equate skipping commercials with theft, it's good to see others accepting the new reality and taking advantage of it to beat Kellner to the profit line, as well as to consumer loyalty.
When you start thinking about digital entertainment hubs in the home, average users are more comfortable with televisions than computers. So when your whole house is networked, it's a very real possibility that your interface to the house's entertainment system could be through your TV. Imagine your news aggregator through your TV (because part of that wireless access includes a connection to the internet), and those commercials they want to download could even be RSS enclosures that automatically download with your newsfeeds. Lots of possibilities if they'd just open their eyes....
Wednesday, May 22, 2002
