According to Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal, the most dreaded sound in the television industry is "bedoop" -- the sound of your TiVo skipping ads.What Joe is trying to say, is that a major television revolution is underway, and it won't be fuelled by the iTunes Music Store, the people with remote controls and PVRs will guide it -- and the change in viewer behavior will continue to force advertising executives to find new ways of selling their wares.
The market penetration of PVRs is still relatively low, but Joe's article provides some facts and figures that should give the best ad-men sleepless nights for a while to come.
1. Actually I wager that the "best" ad men (& women) see DVRs like TiVo as an OPPORTUNITY for success rather than a threat. It's the dinosaurs that are afraid.
PVRs don't mean you can't make & sell advertising, it just means you make & sell advertising in a different way. This process has already begun with small things like product placement or little running ads across the bottom of a screen during a show (which can be annoying but not as bad a a regular commercial), you can, and companies do sell advertising directly to TiVo subscribers going through TiVo.
No doubt it that PVRs will cost some advertising types money, but it will make other very very wealthy.
Posted at 5:35PM on Oct 26th 2005 by Robert Aitchison