On Friday TiVo president Tom Rogers sent a letter to about 70 TV and cable networks, advertisers agencies, and in a "if you can't step up to the plate, we will" move to Nielsen. The gist of the letter was this, "Sure, we know that Nielsen went and postponed their plan to measure ratings for TV commercials because y'all couldn't agree on a way to measure PVR users. But hey, we have access to what our viewers are watching second by second. We can tell you if they're watching commercials."
Nielsen had planned to launch a commercial ratings service on Dec 11th, but last week announced they'd be postponing that service until the kinks could be worked out. TiVo's been gathering anonymous user data for years, and it wouldn't be that large a jump for the company to aggregate that data and sell it to the networks and advertisers. Of course, this doesn't really solve the problem as not every PVR user has a TiVo, but it's Rogers' way of making the case that even though TiVo gives users the ability to skip ads the company's not really trying to destroy the traditional model of advertiser-based TV.
I'm guessing TiVo wouldn't be getting involved in the debate if they didn't already know the data would show that most PVR owners still watch live TV and don't skip the commercials
1. Would be great if every home in the US had a "TiVo" device. Sorry TiVo, nice try though. Maybe next time.
Posted at 12:07PM on Nov 12th 2006 by R8tingsexec