TiVo Starts Testing "Pop-up" Ads 603
mkraft writes "ZDNet is reporting that TiVo has started a testing a new pop-up style ad on a random and limited number of subscriber's TiVo as of this weekend. The ads are designed to be displayed on screen when the user fast forwards through specially tagged commercials. Clicking the thumbsup or select button on the TiVo remote will take the user to a menu containing more information about the advertisement (text and/or video).
Unfortunately according to reports on the TiVo Community forums the ads are also showing up during actual programs as well."
Saw one last night (Score:4, Informative)
Replay (Score:3, Informative)
30 second skip (Score:5, Informative)
If memory serves me right, Select -> Play -> Select -> 30 -> Select
Makes me glad I went with the Home Theater PC (Score:5, Informative)
I don't have to deal with popups, a small hard drive, a single hard drive and lack of upgradability. Plus, I have 3 tv tuner/encoders so I can record three shows simultaneously while watching a fourth recorded show.
I build my own HTPC using an Abit AN-7, AMD Athlon XP 2500+, Hauppauge PVR-250 tv tuner/encoder cards. It is driven by WinXP Pro SP2 and SageTV.
You can see my HTPC at http://wwww.terrystockdale.com/htpc/htpc_1.shtml [terrystockdale.com] .
Terry
This isn't new (Score:3, Informative)
Luck me, I'm "random and limited" (Score:4, Informative)
No big deal (Score:5, Informative)
Based on how it's supposed to work, with the new tags. While watching a commercial supported TV broadcast, an advertiser has a commercial break in the program where they show 30 seconds of video. While using a TiVo and fast forwarding, this 30 seconds of video is overlayed with a different image optimized for shorter visible duration and takes the same amount of time as before that's less than 30 seconds to play.
There is no impact to the way the TiVo functions.
There is no forced watching of ads.
There is no new add popping up.
It's simply a format shift from blurry video to a static image.
It's a way to redefine the 30 second spot. It becomes a less than 30 second spot of variable duration depending on the fast forward speed.
The easiest way to opt out of ads on TV:
Buy premium commercial free programming, like HBO, Showtime, Cinimax, Starz,
Since this is a pilot of the new tags, that obviously isn't working the way it's supposed to, things do need to change. Since it displayed over regular content where it's not supposed to.
Things we don't know:
Is the problem with the TiVo software?
Is the problem with the broadcasters national feed?
Is the problem with a specific cable companies regional feed?
Were the tags added at the start of a commercial and still present throughout the rest of the broadcast?
All of those need to be addressed before any solution is possible.
My DirecTv TiVO has done this for years (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How did Tivo fail so horribly like this? (Score:4, Informative)
You can get an 80 hour TiVo for $99 after rebate. Do you think it costs them less than that to produce the hardware?
Is there such a thing out there without me having to build a MythTV box?
Yes, there are lots of them. Find anything that comes with the "TiVo Basic" service, and it's a device exactly like you describe. They're expensive, sometimes costing more than a TiVo with lifetime service.
Getting worse and worse (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So much for TiVo (Score:5, Informative)
Also this happen on a rewind too if you read the Tivo forums. And due to a bug its displaying during the programs and not during the adds if you pause live.
Re:Screenshot.. (Score:3, Informative)
I just saw that they don't think it'll be coming to the Series 1 Tivo's, so I don't have anything to worry about... just a reason not to upgrade.
30 Second Skip = God (Score:4, Informative)
Can't believe people actually use fast-forward instead!
Re:So much for TiVo (Score:3, Informative)
This is INSIGHTFUL?!?
First of all, the ad is for the product you're fast forwarding through - that is, if you fast forward throughb a movie ad, you'll see a "billboard" or a banner ad for THAT MOVIE.
Second, you don't have to minimize anything. The ad appears for the exact length of the ad as it's being fast forwarded - that is, about a second or two. (How an ad that is only visible for about a second or two is cost effective is highly questionable to me, but that's how it works.)
Re:"Our goal..." (Score:5, Informative)
And with all those TV shows coming out on DVDs, chances are you can even get popular TV shows via netflix.
Best of all, the big studios make Some money (although not as much as if you bought the DVDs) so they'll never crack down on your supplier of almost free* movies (netflix/wal-mart etc.)
Anything you can't get via netflix you can DL, which will drastically cut down on how much you want/need to DL greatly. Others have mentioned myth TV, which is Yet Another option, but it won't cut out the ads, however there are splitting/merging tools that can be manually used to clip out ads, without recoding.
*= $1.50, to $3.50 depending on how often you return discs cost of media etc. If you actuall bother to DivX encode(which is a pain, and not worth my time) them, you can fit about 4-6 times the movies per disc, cutting media cost...
Re:Create an "Ads Channel", watch it, you pay less (Score:2, Informative)
Time to stop connecting to the TiVo service (Score:1, Informative)
Re:30 second skip (Score:4, Informative)
If that keeps working I'll be ok with Tivo, but if they take that away and/or display ads during the 30sec skip, they'll incur my wrath! I could live without Tivo. I don't want to, but I could.
Re:So much for TiVo (Score:5, Informative)
And this got modded as INFORMATIVE??
You obviously have not seen one of these ads. I got an ad for The Interpreter last night (apparently the only ad TiVo's got right now) during "24" - there were no ads for this movie during the ads I was ff'ing through (that I could see, anyway).
The ad appears for the exact length of the ad as it's being fast forwarded - that is, about a second or two.
Uh, no. The ad appears for the entire duration you are fast-forwarding. In my case, this meant that yes, I missed the point at which the show came back several times, because the ad takes up more than 50% of the screen area, and it's right in the middle of the screen.
Apparently this is not supposed to happen (the ads are supposed to disappear when the show comes back), but a) to have it work properly TiVo would need some sort of commercial detect technology, and as far as I know it has none (it does know when special "flagged" commercials from co-sponsors run, but not all ads are flagged), b) that commercial detect technology would have to work 100% of the time, and no commercial detection does that, and c) even if TiVo did have such a thing, and it worked all the time, the TiVo boxes are so slow right now with the 7.1a software that they'd probably lag by 3 or 4 seconds anyway, which when ff'ing on 3X (which is really faster than 3X speed) could be two minutes into the TV show.
In short, these ads totally destroy one of the main reasons for using TiVo, and when you see one, you'll feel the same. The idea as I first heard it actually didn't bother me so much in theory (even though I am paying for this service after all, so I don't see why I should be seeing TiVo-delivered ads), but the implementation in practice is absolutely horrendous. It will definitely, 100% cause me to cancel my subscription if it is not completely redesigned.
TiVo ads are obstructive (Score:1, Informative)
For those who have 30 second skip, HOW DO YOU DO THIS?? My remote has no such feature, there is no 30second skip button on my remote or mentioned in the manual. (Series2 40hr)
Solution... ReplayTV (Score:2, Informative)
No ads, better technology, similiar prices.
What's the confusion?
Re:Screenshot.. (Score:3, Informative)
on byopvr [byopvr.com]
It's not as bad as I thought, but it's still not good...
e.
Re:They killed their product long ago (Score:2, Informative)
The ad stuff from the main menu? The TV spotlights? All advertising paid to Tivo by the corresponding companies. Even the pop-up thing was pioneered by the "thumbs up" graphic that would show up during specific commercials. Hitting the thumbs-up would either allow you to view an additional commercial about the product (eg. that 4x4 truck) or record the program being advertised (eg. Friends.)
Tivo has made no secrets about their activities. They collect aggregated data from your box (unless you opt-out) and this data is then used to help sell ad space/time on the Tivo to interested companies.
As for the new pop-up ads, I'm going to have to wait and see them in action. Right now, reports are too confused to really know what exactly is going on. I'd be interested to know how they'll work with the 30sec. skip backdoor. Will they remove this completely, or will it just not work at all, or will the ads show up during my shows? Obviously, that last one would be the worst case scenario...
Re:In other news, the sky is falling.. (Score:2, Informative)
I'd hope not, given the cable pipe it's sitting on. It's a higher-speed always-on connection. Resorting to dialup would be a step backwards.
Being that my cable box is a monthly add on service to my existing cable bill, it would seem illogical for the cable company to add a "feature" like popup ads.
Seeing that TiVos are a subscription service, it's as illogical for them. But they did it. While that's no proof your cable company WILL do it, it's not proving your cable company WON'T do it, either.
Regardless if I view ads or not, the cable company gets the channels at a fixed rate and I pay a fixed rate according to what channels I want.
I suspect that's not their only revenue stream. I watched the same channel on C-Band and on cable. About a third of the cable ads were different, a lot of them local or for the cable network's other channels. Would the cable company go through the trouble of sticking their own ads in if they just handed the profits off to another company?
The tv channels get their advertising revenue at a rate based on their audience, not by the view (like web advertising) or according to me viewing the ads or not.
The assumption is there; you watch the program, you watch the ads. Why are Super Bowl half-time ads so expensive? Because everyone watches them. People are generally sedentary and don't want to miss a minute of Reality Contestant A eating worms or Sitcom Star B's wacky misadventures with his crazy pals. Anything that challenges this concept - like a TiVo - makes the advertisers leery and therefore willing to pay less. Even if they're not nervous about a TiVo, they can still use it as leverage. "Our research shows that a full 10% of your viewers have a TiVo and are actively avoiding our ads. We want 10% of our money back." Like spam, no one would broadcast ads if they never worked. Someone's buying this junk. Less people see it, less people buy, less money is made to offset the cost of the ad, less money is willing to be paid for the next ad.
By using your cable company's DVR instead of TiVo's, they can theoretically keep track of what ads you're skipping and offer to sell that data back to advertisers. What ad money they lose to TiVo fear they could make back up - and then some - with a bigger prize: user feedback. What ads keep people from hitting the fast forward? What ones do they fast forward quickest on? (Or does your service agreement preclude data collection? Anonymous aggregate data collection?)
Even without tracking, what's to stop them from someday offering a package deal? Honest Leo's Used Car Emporaganza buys a real-time ad, he also gets a fast-forward ad that covers the time for his ad, plus the Coca-Cola and Seinfeld rerun ads that follow.
Now, TiVo too gets paid the same if you watch the ads or not.
The network ads? They get nothing for those. Which is why there's incentive to replace them with their own.
So why are they doing this? I guess the base rate of revenue is not paying off their debt fast enough.
I don't know anything about their financial state but it doesn't matter if they're in the red or the black - they do stuff like this because they think it'll pull in more cash.