TiVo is digging deeper into its bag of tricks to find ways to work with advertisers, rather than against them. Sure, we know one of the main appeals of buying a PVR is the ability to fast forward through commercials. But without those commercials, here wouldn't be much on TV, and thus no TiVo.Here's how TiVo's new "Program Placement" system works. Advertisers buy time associated with a particular program, and TiVo will display the ad after you're done watching the show, when there's nothing left to fast forward through.
Burger King, GM, MasterCard, and The Weather Channel have already agreed to participate.
The press release does say "for the viewer who chooses to watch it," which seems to imply that you're no more obligated to watch these commercials than any other. It seems the hope is that the ads will be so entertaining that you'll want to watch them. Umm... yeah.
Overall, this project seems to be based on the fact that people want to watch commercials just as much as they want to watch television programs. They just haven't found the commercials they like. And that really seems like a flawed premise to me. Sure, funny commercials sometimes become the stuff of email forwards and YouTube legend. But that's the exception, not the rule. Since most ads are designed at selling a product, they're first and foremost meant to get you to do something you would not otherwise do. Entertainment is only an ends to that mean. And given the choice between watching a TV show that can get me to think about the world in a new way, and an entertaining ad that gets me to think about buying a specific brand of toothpaste, I think I'll just fast forward through "Program Placement."
1. Brad,
I couldn't disagree more with your take on advertising. I think people do like advertisements for things they actually want. Would you not watch a TiVo commercial on TV at least once? What if you were thinking of buying a new sedan and there was a commercial on for one, you wouldn't choose to watch it?
The problem with modern day commercials is they are too broad, I have no desire to buy most of the products and it doesn't matter if they show me the commercial 100 times(they will try) I will not buy it. The sooner TiVo can show my commercials for gadgets and sports cars the better.
I do this with my TiVo now, I fast forward through all the commercials, but if I see a Apple commercial that is new, I will stop and watch it. Even though I already own a Mac, because I am interested in Apple products and they have entertaining commercials.
Not all commercials are bad, just the ones I am not interested in.
Posted at 10:32AM on Nov 28th 2006 by Ben Drawbaugh