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Television Media The Almighty Buck

TiVo Data Collection Ramifications 376

Posted by michael from the messing-up-the-business-model dept.
www.sharkdefense.com writes "Businessweek has an interesting article on a new TiVo technology which allows ad executives to see which ads are skipped on the DVRs. Thank goodness they still don't know if you went to the bathroom for a break or to the fridge. The article is an eye-opening read."
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TiVo Data Collection Ramifications More

TiVo Data Collection Ramifications

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  • You can't handle the truth! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bjschrock ( 557973 ) * <bschrock@@@gmail...com> on Friday June 27, 2003 @03:57PM (#6314733)
    But it's not the holy grail for advertising agencies and media companies, which have built an industry around the idea of getting a shallow message to a broad audience rather than a tailored message to a narrower one,"

    So, let's see... Companies/organizations who sit between the producer and consumer, have made up their own rules and flimsy business model and don't like it when times change and require the business model to change. Where have I heard this before? *cough*RIAA*cough*
    I know this isn't the same thing, I just saw the similarity. Oh, and I didn't see in the article, were the better ads replayed? They were during the Super Bowl [medialifemagazine.com].

    Reality TV, news, and "event" programming such as the Oscars do significantly better at getting viewers to see the commercials.
    PLEASE tell me this doesn't mean more Reality TV shows!!! I can't handle it!!! They're replacing the somewhat-good shows that have survived so far.
    • Your absolutely right, fact is that if people really care about the quality of the programing they watch then they will pay for higher quality. If no one watches adverts anymore then companies should stop paying for them.

      Essentially good telly costs money and I am quite certain that every thing will sort itself out just fine.

    • Re:You can't handle the truth! (Score:5, Funny)

      by thrillbert ( 146343 ) * on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:03PM (#6314797) Homepage
      PLEASE tell me this doesn't mean more Reality TV shows!!!

      Slashdot TV, Real geeks unequiped to deal with the real world. From the makers of Survivor!

      ---
      The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got to be good.
    • Prediction: to account for the possibility that people watching reality television are brain-dead and, while not forwarding through commercials, are not watching them exept to try and eat food that appears in some spots, Tivo has introduced a new on-demand service, interactive TV with links to live web chats on the current program bundled with TiVo-CU, the Tivo eye which scans the living room to record number of viewers and general state of consciousness. Video will automatically pixilate all faces.

      Next M
    • Networks and producers love the Reality TV craze. No high-priced actors, no writers. Just a bunch of everyday people.
      I don't get it though... Reality as seen through my TV? No thanks. I've got enough drama in my own reality. Really now.
    • Reality TV, news, and "event" programming such as the Oscars do significantly better at getting viewers to see the commercials.

      Hell, we alreay know that reality TV viewers will watch _anything_ - why are you surpriised that they are watching the adds too? It's probably of better quality than the programme itself!

    • Re:You can't handle the truth! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dbrutus ( 71639 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:28PM (#6315041) Homepage
      It's more likely that the decent shows will be sponsored instead of saturated with ads. Firefly, brought to you by Preparation H!

      Seriously, good entertainment will always draw an audience and audiences will always draw advertisers. If broadband continues to get rolled out, we could see TVoIP with advertisers taking an international market campaign sponsoring programs on the net.

      That's the beauty of capitalism. It eventually dethrones the most entrenched incumbents as they continue to foul up. You just can't predict how and when.

      • Decent Product Placement (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rkent ( 73434 ) <rkent&post,harvard,edu> on Friday June 27, 2003 @05:00PM (#6315274)
        It's more likely that the decent shows will be sponsored instead of saturated with ads. Firefly, brought to you by Preparation H!

        When I read this, the idea of firefly presented by a hemmeroids ointment was so ridiculous, it made me laugh. But not, I realized, much more than regular product placement.

        Advertising agencies have still got it all wrong. Why doesn't one of the characters on Friends, for instance, have a thing for coke? I know enough people in the real world who are adamantly "addicted" to certain brands and foods that it wouln't even stretch the imagination to see a TV character with that trait.

        But instead they do horribly klutzy things like "the doritos picnic" on the original survivor, or the painfully akward Coke placement on American Idol. It's actually disarmingly honest; "hey look, we're a show you like and we're pushing a product, don't you want to BUY it??"

        No. No we don't. We're over advertising as a social contract, where we tolerate it with the abiding satisfaction of receiving the accompanying content as a "reward." We no longer feel any obligation to this system. Advertising dollars spent on that very mechanism are terribly wasted, even if it works sometimes. Better to assign the desired buy-craziness to a TV character we can empathize with and desire to emulate. At least this will catch us off guard for a couple of years.
    • Reality TV, news, and "event" programming are even less interesting that the worst of the ads. No, wait, the news is more interesting, but people don't watch it delayed, so they can't skip ads.

      I certainly hope they're going to account for people who show the show as well as the commercials. Of course, there's nothing they can do about accounting for people who aren't paying any attention to the TV because they just want background noise while they play chess.
    • Sadly, this will become a bad thing for consumers I think. How? Well, for starters, companies like Nike or whoever will stop paying extreme amounts of cash for stupid commericials nobody cares about anyway. The only commercials that I would expect to work and be worth it are late night fast food commercials. I can't even begin to count the number of times where I hopped in the car for some Taco Bell because I saw a chalupa on tv at 1 am. So, if the ad revenue stops coming, 1 of 2 things will happen:

      1)
      • "or"?

        I think you mean "and".

        Anyways, if the companies find out I always skip car commercials, maybe they'd figure out a way to customize the ads I *DO* see. I will actually stop to watch an ad that looks interesting (is about a product I'm interested in.) But 99% of the ads on TV are either for junk I have no interest in (cars, beer, cellphones, makeup, maxipads...) and have been run so many times, they're just downright obnoxious.

        If they want my eyeballs, they're going to have to earn them.

  • The part they don't (Score:3, Insightful)

    by davidm25 ( 606820 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @03:59PM (#6314756)
    mention is when your commericial is cool enought that I watch it but I still can't remember what the heck your advertising.

  • Which ads (Score:5, Funny)

    by xyrw ( 609810 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:00PM (#6314759) Homepage

    which ads are skipped on the DVRs

    All of them?

    • Re:Which ads (Score:5, Interesting)

      by davidm25 ( 606820 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:03PM (#6314799)
      Sure you skip all of them but the question is which ones do you rewind to watch. I have noticed that hot chicks tend to do the trick for me.:) And movies commericials. Of course movies are one of the few products out there where the commericials actually tell you something usefull about the product rather than trying to convince you that buying a product will make you a cooler person.

      • Re:Which ads (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Tyrdium ( 670229 )
        Of course movies are one of the few products out there where the commericials actually tell you something usefull about the product rather than trying to convince you that buying a product will make you a cooler person.

        Actually, I've noticed that trailers seem to be getting less and less descriptive. One of the ads for Terminator 3 that I watched told absolutely nothing about the plot. It was essentially the WB logo melting and reforming into a bar thingy, which then morped into a T in which the number 3 w

        • Anyone seen the Charlies Angels - Full Throttle commercials? It's just a blurring collage of explosions and skin. I love it, but it tells you precisely nothing about the movie beyond the presence of explosions and skin.

          Kintanon

          • Re:Which ads (Score:3, Funny)

            by bongoras ( 632709 ) *
            "explosions and skin" -- you say that like it's a bad thing. Seriously, is there anything anyone needs to know about Charlie's Angels besides explosions & skin?
      • I have never rewound to watch a commercial. Usually what happens is I FF too far (too fast) and have to back up again to get back to the program re-entry point.

        Sometimes Tivo's automatic rewind-on-fastforward does it right, but sometimes it doesn't and I end up getting about the last half of the last commercial.

        Sounds like a bunch of erroneous data to me.

        Further made erroneous by me watching something on Tivo and reading a catalog or magazine at the same time. I get into the magazine, forget about the

      • Re:Which ads (Score:5, Funny)

        by notque ( 636838 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:38PM (#6315105) Homepage Journal
        Sure you skip all of them but the question is which ones do you rewind to watch. I have noticed that hot chicks tend to do the trick for me.:)

        Great, every ad will now how hot chicks.

        Oh wait...

  • The proper time for breaks (Score:5, Funny)

    by shlong ( 121504 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:00PM (#6314763) Homepage
    Thank goodness they still don't know if you went to the bathroom for a break or to the fridge.

    I think the point that we all are missing is that we should be watching TV for the ads and taking our breaks during the filler (a.k.a. the actual show). At least, that's the way to be a good consumer.
    • A lot of ads really are better than the shows they support. I personally thing this is Darwinian. If people are actively looking for your ad to watch it then you can just ignore the whole TIVO "problem" and sit back and collect your cash.

      TW
  • better ads!!! Woohoo! Now when I visit the relatives they'll make me laugh with their epic stories of this funniest commerial or that one with the dog!!! Yeah! Go TiVo!


    ..end sarcasm...
    • Check this out: they say that viewership is inversely proportional to ad watching, and then give an example of how few people watch a boring show like "The Weakest Link", but lots watch "The Practice" (though they skip the commmercials).

      What that says is that bored people stay for the commercials. Interested people watch the show, and skip the commercials.

      So that says that the TV shows need to be more boring. That's right, you're going to pay $60 per month for satellite TV, and at any time, you can wat
      • Selling the TV and buying a farm is a great idea, but for those that don't, marketers will adjust to the new ad climate. At the end of the article it says that companies will just spend more money on things like product placement and program sponsorship.

        The best thing that could come of this would be TV free of most commercials. Unfortunately, this would probably lead to shows that are unwatchable as they would contain so many "ad-ettes" (pop-up ads ala TLC, product placement, etc). Guess there's alwa

  • All we need next is ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Professor D ( 680160 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:00PM (#6314768)
    A multiple-choice box for _why_ the commercial was skipped or watched.

    +4 "funny!"

    -2 "A feminine hygene product during the Superbowl is seriously OT!"

  • Ugh (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:01PM (#6314771)
    "Certain genres are "stickier" than others"

    Are they talking about Skinimax and the Playboy Channel?

  • I like this kind of data collection (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kawika ( 87069 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:01PM (#6314776)
    As long as it's statistical it will tell advertisers a lot. As the article mentions, it's not something the broadcasters want to hear. But if advertisers knew the best time to show ads, maybe we wouldn't get tampon ads during dinner.

  • uhm... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Artemis P. Fonswick ( 680020 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:01PM (#6314781) Homepage Journal
    Businessweek has an interesting article on a new TiVo technology which allows ad executives to see which ads are skipped on the DVRs.

    Maybe this just means we won't have to sit through crappy commericials anymore because the companies can now figure out what the public (dis)likes. It's not like they're stealing your credit card numbers or anything...
  • One would think that 98% of the people who have DVRs would end up skipping all of the ads they've recorded. After all, that's half the purpose of getting a DVR in the first place, isn't it?

    • After all, that's half the purpose of getting a DVR in the first place, isn't it?

      Not quite half. 30% maybe.

      However, as a previous poster suggested, some commercials I find myself watching again. And like him, commercials with a pretty girl or for a cool looking movie often get watched again by me.

      Still, I appreciate being able to fast forward through commercials, even if I don't actually do it. If Tivo ever changes things so I cannot (either because somebody pays them to do so, or some (stupi

    • That's true for programming that you're watching delayed, but as the article noted, certain programming tends to be watched live even by people with PVRs. I hate watching hockey delayed on my Replay box and once you're back to "live" programming, you're back to watching the commercials...

      What is likely to happen from this kind of research (if PVRs really get big) is that ad time for sports and "must-see" "talk about around the water cooler the next morning" programming will become really pricey and every

  • I'd be alright with this... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bazabba ( 669692 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:02PM (#6314792) Homepage
    if the Ad companies that save/make money off of this technology paid for my monthly service fee.

  • What for ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:02PM (#6314793)
    a new TiVo technology which allows ad executives to see which ads are skipped on the DVRs

    Do they need a new TiVo technology to know that all ads are skipped ?

    It's like if my email client told bulk marketers which spam I didn't delete ...

    • Re:What for ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by egomaniac ( 105476 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:21PM (#6314967) Homepage
      Do they need a new TiVo technology to know that all ads are skipped ?

      I've had a TiVo for three years now, and I don't skip all ads. First, some shows are compelling enough that I watch them live, and am forced to suffer through ads as a result. Second, ads for products that I'm actually interested in are worth watching, as are genuinely funny and creative ads (I love the Jack in the Box Chipotle Chicken Sandwich commercial). Not all advertising is evil.

      • Re:What for ? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 )
        "I've had a TiVo for three years now, and I don't skip all ads. First, some shows are compelling enough that I watch them live, and am forced to suffer through ads as a result. Second, ads for products that I'm actually interested in are worth watching, as are genuinely funny and creative ads (I love the Jack in the Box Chipotle Chicken Sandwich commercial). Not all advertising is evil."

        Mod this up. There's a reason why AdCritic, the website that had a massive database of movieclips of commercials for fre

    • Not all the ads. My wife always gets pissed at me when I say, "wait wait, backup, I want to see that ad." Usually a movie ad for a movie I think I want to see. But there _are_ _some_ other good ads. Though, they don't seem to work very well, because I can't remember the brand of a single one of them! :-)

  • Hackable? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:03PM (#6314798)
    Is there some way to flip the evil bit and make it seem like I watch nothing but commercials?
    • Do you really want them to think all commercials are watched? Wouldn't that encourage them to add more and longer commercials?

      What we really need is to strategically convince them when we watch commercials or not.

      Consider movies on broadcast TV. Did you ever notice how the first half of the movie is virtually commercial free, but the last 15 minutes of the movie is stretched over 40 minutes?

      We should try and convince them that we would only watch 2 minutes of commercials during a single break and then
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tyrdium ( 670229 )
    How do Neilsen (sp?) ratings work? I know that I generally change the channel during boring commercials, and I bet a lot of other people do, also. Does the TiVo have picture in picture? If it does, wouldn't that make it seem as though the person was watching the commercials while in reality watching something else? Or does it ignore the smaller picture?

    • Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Informative)

      by bazabba ( 669692 )
      How do Neilsen (sp?) ratings work?

      I thought the data for the neilsen ratings was gathered from set top boxes distributed by the neilsen company.

  • What's the problem here? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Brento ( 26177 ) * <brento AT brentozar DOT com> on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:03PM (#6314804) Homepage
    I really WISH the advertisers knew which ads I was skipping, and which ones make me rewind to see what exactly they were doing. There are some good ads out there that are hilarious - the first time I saw the "Stripperella" ads on TNN, for example, you'd better believe I backed the remote up. On the other hand, the guy with the polka-dotted suit needs to quit throwing his money away and get with the program....
    • that's what focus groups and logic are for. It's pretty obvious which commercials people like. And if Mr. CEO NEEDS those statistics, they have focus groups.

      The problem, as you put it, is that most people on /. are ardently set against technology being used to infiltrate their privacy, especially when it offers benefits to those implimenting the technology and offers no real benefits for the end user.

  • Finally.. (Score:3, Redundant)

    by cK-Gunslinger ( 443452 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:04PM (#6314811) Journal
    ..This is the beginning of the end of that drunken orgy of dollars spent on broadcast TV..
    Good. I don't mind some advertising, but I'm not going to watch ads for things that I would never buy in a million years. Maybe if advertising start making better profits with more effective ads, they'll produce less ads.. *cough*.. *snort*..*mwahahahah!!!* Oh well, it sounded good in theory.

  • It's a Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DASHSL0T ( 634167 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:04PM (#6314813) Homepage
    If it helps advertisers understand what ads people watch and why then you will get better ads. Better ads = more ads people will watch. More ads people will watch will result in higher quality ads, ones that might actually provide information that is useful to you or even somewhat entertaining.

    This has to be better than the endless flood of mindless ads they shove at us now. As long as the information is only used in the aggregate, I see only positives from this.

  • I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:05PM (#6314821)
    So, how can the ad executives determine if you're skipping the commercial because it sucks or because you've already seen it before?

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) *
      Why can't businesses just treat advertising like the inverse of R&D?

      You set up a budget for each, and the rewards are unknown, but positive.

      Advertisements are to 1) make you feel good about the company 2) product awareness and announcement 3) to promote specials.

      There is no science in changing ppls behaviour from advertising any more than there is a science to R&D (kinda ironic, eh?). With the science of R&D, I mean that the company does not upfront know how much more sales will come from ma

  • So what? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ricin ( 236107 )
    Heaven forbid they'll find out that on TV nobody actually pays attention to the commercials either. That all this spending on advertising was all in vain anyway. That they had been better off not sacking their crunchies but save on advertising throwaways instead. That it's merely visual and auditory pollution. That people just find it annoying. Surely that couldn't be the case. The horror!

  • This is great (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:07PM (#6314839)
    90% of commercials are so annoying the prevent me from buying a product. There are products I haven't bought for years because of annoying commercials. 8% of commercials have no impact on my buying habits, and then there's the last 2% which I like and increase the chances I will buy the product.

    If monitoring which commercials people skip causes companies to produce better and more entertaining ads, I'm all for it.

    Jason
    ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
  • Is it just me or does the fact that nearly everything we do/say/watch/browse is being monitored and logged these days?

  • Ad-supported TV (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nick this ( 22998 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:07PM (#6314845) Journal
    Does that mean we'll start seeing the equivalent of the "please click on my sponsor links" on TV shows?

    Something like "If everyone watches all the commercials on the next three programs of Firefly, we'll keep it on the air." constantly running across the bottom of the screen.

    And just when I thought the TV watching experience had hit absolute rock bottom...

    • Re:Ad-supported TV (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tha_mink ( 518151 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:17PM (#6314930)
      No, what it DOES mean though, is that they will start using the bottom of the screen for ads while your favorite program is running. That way, you have no choice but to watch. I mean, networks already do this for their own ads so it's just a matter of time before you are watching South Park with a Coke can in the bottom right corner for 1/2 hour.

  • Ads are irritating... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CoolVibe ( 11466 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:08PM (#6314858) Journal
    Why the hell you do think people skip them? Not because of the ad content though, it's because they DRIVE UP THE FSCKING VOLUME so fscking loud. I regularily have to turn the volume down on my set down when the advertisements come. And when the scheduled show resumes, it's so inaudible, I have to turn up the volume again to be able to hear it. Then the ads come again and they literally BLAST out of my speakers.

    That's my (and probably others') big pet peeve about them. Oh, they could be less frequent too. There is such a thing called advertisement overload, as where the unsuspecting consumer is so irritated by the advertisement, as where they lose interest in the ad itself, and goes of to take a leak (or to do something else useful, like grabbing a beer or something). Of course, the product doesn't get seen when that happens.

    But will "they" learn? Probably not.

    • Not because of the ad content though, it's because they DRIVE UP THE FSCKING VOLUME so fscking loud.

      How else are they supposed to make sure you can hear it from the bathroom?

  • So I use my TiVo to record my favorite shows and I consistently fast forward through all of the commercials.

    Marketers considering buying commercials on my favorite show determine it is not lucrative to do so.

    Funding for my favorite shows plummets; my favorite show gets canceled.

    And we're left with only shows with stunned and dulled audiences too stupid or too cheap to buy a TiVO. [And I'll bet most of them take a potty/fridge break during a lot of the commercials anyway.]

  • British TV ads VS "The cup of Tea" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dr_LHA ( 30754 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:08PM (#6314864) Homepage
    In the UK theres a strange phenomenon in TV ad viewing, that is the "cup of Tea". On UK TV ad breaks tend to be longer and less frequent. UK dwellers also tend to drink alot of tea during the evening, and making a cup of tea takes about the same time as an ad break. For example during the half time break in the soap opera "Coronation Street" the load on the National Grid goes up something like double as 15 million viewers get off the couch and turn on their electric kettles.

    So in essense this activity means that alot less viewers are actually present during the ad breaks than in the US when watching live TV. So what's the solution: Make ads that people actually want to see. British ads on the whole are funnier and more episodic than their US counterparts. I've never heard anyone in my time in the US talk about "The new ad for Coke" around the water cooler at work, but in the UK this regularly happens for the soft drink "Tango" for example.

    So perhaps the answer is to make ads more entertaining, less repeated (why oh why show the same ad twice in an ad break), and less formulaic. If US ad agencies showed half the imagination that the UK ad agencies showed then people might actually be less tempted to skip over the ads or leave the room.
    • The water cooler phenonemon is common everywhere. You probably haven't seen it because I'm not going to assume that someone visiting the US from the UK has seen a specific commercial, thus I wouldn't bring it up.
      • The water cooler phenonemon is common everywhere. You probably haven't seen it because I'm not going to assume that someone visiting the US from the UK has seen a specific commercial, thus I wouldn't bring it up.

        I've lived in the US for over 4 years so am fully integrated into the water cooler community. My comment was based on my experience of comparing UK and US ads and people's reactions to them. There are some ads that provoke discussion, e.g. the Superbowl halftime ads, but ads of the ingenuity shown
  • It's got a bit more technological, yes. Checking out what we skip through. What ramifications will this have? Who knows. Maybe better commercials, maybe less ill-placed commercials, who knows. Only time will tell.

    It's still an art though. I sometimes just let the TiVo go while I make a run for the bathroom. Ha! I showed them. So while they think I'm I'm watching the commercial for depends, I'm actually easing the tension on my bladder. So they still have to figure out of those commercials we're not skipp
  • Let's see, on my TiVO, I skip, um, *all* of the commercials. That must take pretty advanced statistics...but I think it woks out to about 100%. :)
  • These trends don't threaten to kill TV advertising, but they're sure to change how ads are produced and sold. Today, media buyers purchase TV ad time based on program ratings and demographics.

    Kind of reminds me about the RIAA battling against p2p filesharing. They refuse to accept that the music market is changing, and they're fighting as hard as they can to keep it like it is.

    Now we've got TV execs scared that the people who buy advertising time on their shows will be able to find out just how effectiv
  • While it is not surpising that a lot of the TiVo owners skip commercials, I'm wondering whether or not you can consider TiVo owners as representative of the overall market of TV watchers. I would submit that TiVo owners do not represent a typical slice of the american viewing public, and as such the results would have to be taken with a grain of salt.

    Does anyone know if there is a TiVo demographic?

  • Certainly sounds like it to me. Do they pay for this personal information or just take it, without even a nice thank you note, and a bunch of flowers, or a box of chocolates, and do they enquire of your satisfaction afterwards?
  • My understanding is that certain ads, especially good funny ones, are watched more than other. So, what do advertisers derive from the fact that, for example, the ad with the chihuahua that says "Yo quiero Taco Bell" is a hit ? that people love Taco Bell food ? that they love cute undersized doggies in ads ? that they love funny ads ?

    In the case of Taco Bell, since their food is mainly about calories per dollar, the answer is pretty clear. But it might not be the case for other products. I can't see that

  • Judging from the way I and many people I know watch television (admittedly not a statistically significant data set), I would guess that a lot of those shows or genres in which people do not skip commercials, or change the channel, result from "ambient" television viewing. That is, people leaving the television on in the background while they do other things, like read Slashdot, or cook dinner.

    The shows where people eliminate commercials are those to which they are actually paying attention.

  • 1. only have a 2-3 minute commercial break every 15 minutes.
    2. don't ever show the same commercial twice during the same tv show commercial break (this is what annoys me the most).

  • I would think... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bobman1235 ( 191138 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:17PM (#6314928) Homepage
    that if someone were going to skip over commercials, they'd just blindly skip over all of them, not pick and choose which they wanted to see. You're either in the mood to deal with commercials, or you just skip the lot of them.

    Is this not the case?

  • Take that! (Score:3, Funny)

    by jeffkjo1 ( 663413 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:21PM (#6314968) Homepage
    I made a little tin foil hat for my fast forward button.

    Take that ad-execs!

  • I told ya, suckers. (Score:3, Funny)

    by flacco ( 324089 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:21PM (#6314979)
    I opted out of that data collection crap knowing full well that it would be exploited at some point, despite their protestations to the contrary. I never would have bought a tivo without the opt-out option anyway.

    Open source Linux-based PVR's to the rescue!

    Thank goodness they still don't know if you went to the bathroom for a break or to the fridge

    Unfortunately they'll be able to deduce that you were jerking off when you rewound and replayed that Doritos girl commercial about forty times.

  • (1) If the ads are really good. Not even always then. If immediately when the ad section starts, you get a crappy ad, you might not watch the rest. So, alot of it depends on what the first ad is.

    (2) Cliffhanger programs, or can't-miss'. If someone really doesn't want to miss anything, they're more likely to put up with ads. This means that the program needs to be that good, and it needs to have left off at the right moment.
  • A number of recent articles have discussed advertisers who are moving away from traditional 30-second commercials and instead embedding their products into the shows themselves to avoid ad-skippers. (Think Coke and American Idol) While I love skipping ads with my TiVo, I do wonder if this new trend will only lead to big corporations getting bigger and less competition in the marketplace. Companies like Coke, Microsoft, and McDonalds can afford to spend millions to sponsor shows but upstarts can't and wil

  • Why commercials suck (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zapp ( 201236 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:24PM (#6315001)
    As many have pointed out.. what's important is not what ads are getting skipped, but why they are.
    Here are a few things they have done wrong, that really piss off viewers:
    1. Volume. The add should be no louder than the rest of the broadcast material. This should be a standard among all stations - if my tv is set at a specific volume, I should be able to go to any channel at any time and have it be *exactly* the same volume.

    2. Timing of product. Tampon/pad commercials during dinner or sport events are probably not very well planned. Similarly, I've seen car/realestate commercials on during saturday morning cartoons...

    3. Repeating ad. Ever watch a 30 minute show and see the *same* commercial 4 times (once before, twice during, once after). Or even 2 different commercials for the same product back to back? That gets annoying, and you blank it out.

    4. Portrays customer as idiot. This may just be a pet peeve of mine, but it seems to be a fad now in advertising to portray customers as mindless automotons who just consume whatever you give them. For example, the guy in Best Buy staring mindlessly at the new TV, and the salesguy saying "dude, you need these speakers too."

    Personally, I am amazed advertising has worked this far at all. We saw how HORRIBLY it failed at supporting websites. What if this (counting ad skips) is effectually the same as counting the lack of clicks on a banner? will advertising firms start to lose money, stop paying content providers for space, causing them to lose money?

  • Sponsorship instead of Ads (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jsprat23 ( 148634 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:25PM (#6315005)
    According to Forrester Research, when personal-video-recorder (PVR) technology reaches 30 million households in 2006, 76% of advertisers say they'll cut their TV ad spending -- one quarter of them by more than 41%. Instead of buying TV ads, 65% plan to spend more on program sponsorship, 46% will increase budgets for product placement, and 36% say they'll rechannel their dollars to online advertising.

    This quote is exactly what I want to see. A couple years ago, Schindler's List ran uninterrupted except for an intermission on TV and was sponsored by Ford. The only mention of Ford was a brought to you by Ford message and a logo suring the intermission and at the beginning and end. No, I didn't have to look up who sponsored Schindler's List, I actually remembered, thanks Ford. This is similar to what PBS does minus the telethon. I've actually watched who the sponsors are for some of the shows on PBS, simply because they have a relevant product or service that *gasp* I may actually be interested in.

    Are you listening big media and advertising?

  • IMHO here's what's happening (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) * on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:27PM (#6315026) Homepage Journal
    On April 11, 2002, ABC's popular TV drama The Practice drew a TiVo rating of 8.9, meaning 8.9% of TiVo owners watched the show live or recorded it and watched it later. But those viewers watched just 30% of the ads shown. Meanwhile, quiz show The Weakest Link, drew a rating of 0.9, but viewers watched 78% of the commercials. TV news magazine 60 Minutes got only a 2.2 rating, but its viewers sat through 73% of the ads.

    Certain genres are "stickier" than others, TiVo's research shows. Big-budget situation comedies and dramas tend to have the lowest retention and commercial-viewing rate because couch potatoes tend to record them and skip through the commercials rather than watch them live. Reality TV, news, and "event" programming such as the Oscars do significantly better at getting viewers to see the commercials. Just 39% of viewers watched ads during the highest-rated network TV show, Friends, vs. 75% for the 45th Annual Grammy Awards and 58% for Fox reality show Fear Factor.

    First of all: Tivo doesn't really know whether or not I watch ads. It just knows whether or not it got to play them. This is important.

    The inverse relationship between rating and getting to show ads, and the variable stickiness, is no surprise at all if you watch what a Tivo user does. Here is what is happening, and it's so simple: Tivo gets to play the ad, if the user isn't paying attention. Tivo doesn't get to play ads, if the user is intently watching the show.

    That's all there is to it. I play The Simpsons and it's some lame episode that I've already seen way too many times, so I get bored and surf Slashdot. Being a stupid monkey, I don't just stop The Simpsons and watch something else, because I like The Simpsons so I think I want to watch it. But nevertheless, since I've seen the episode too many times, I am bored. I just don't realize I'm bored. So I let the episode play. I'm not watching. A commercial break happens. I don't notice for a minute, because I'm in the midst of writing a troll that requires all my concentration. Then somewhere in the back of my head, I hear that someone is selling cars, and I wake up from my TrollTrance and look over at the TV outraged, screaming "Commercial!!! Kill! Kill! Kill!" and fast forward until I see The Simpsons again. Then I go back to writing my troll.

    Now suppose I'm watching Futurama, and it's an episode that I somehow missed the first time around. I'm fascinated. Instead of making an ass of myself on the internet, I watch TV. I am paying attention and following along. When a commercial break happens, I automatically skip over it.

    Back to the stats:

    The Practice drew a TiVo rating of 8.9, meaning 8.9% of TiVo owners watched the show live or recorded it and watched it later. But those viewers watched just 30% of the ads shown.
    That's because 70% were actually watching the show while playing it. I've never seen it, but it sounds like it might be a good show; I should give it a try. The other 30% were bored and trolling Slashdot.
    Meanwhile, quiz show The Weakest Link, drew a rating of 0.9, but viewers watched 78% of the commercials.
    That's because the bored Tivo user wasn't really watching the show. He's just using the TV to make reassuring background noise in his meaningless life. Tivo thinks he is "watching the ads" but really he is explaining to somebody, the finer points of pouring hot grits.
    Big-budget situation comedies and dramas tend to have the lowest retention and commercial-viewing rate because couch potatoes tend to record them and skip through the commercials rather than watch them live.
    The user is watching.
    Reality TV, news, and "event" programming such as the Oscars do significantly better at getting viewers to see the commercials.
    The user is not watching.

  • Skip commercials, go to jail (Score:4, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:28PM (#6315038) Homepage
    • "[Skipping commercials is] theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial . . . you're actually stealing the programming." -- Jamie Kellner, CEO Turner Broadcasting Div., AOL/Time/Warner.

    From the plaintiff's filing in Paramount vs. SonicBlue:

    • Defendants' unlawful scheme attacks the fundamental economic underpinnings of free television and basic nonbroadcast services and, hence, the means by which plaintiffs' copyrighted works are paid for. Advertisers will not pay to have their advertisements placed within television programming delivered to viewers when the advertisements will be invisible to those viewers. In effect, by eliminating the embedded advertising, defendants' copying-and-commercial-deletion feature will (as to those viewers who employ the feature) eliminate the source of payment to the copyright owner for the very program being viewed. As a result, defendants' unlawful scheme impairs the value of plaintiffs' works and reduces the incentive for their creation and dissemination. For subscription television program services that depend in part on advertising revenues, use of the AutoSkip feature has the same effect. In both cases, the AutoSkip feature would fundamentally and inevitably erode the means by which copyright owners are paid for their works and hence the value of the programming they create.

    So there.

  • I used to watch quite a bit of TV. Now I rarely watch at all, save for a few select shows...

    Nova
    Frontline
    Survivor
    Big Brother
    Fear Factor
    Dog Eat Dog
    The Great Race
    Frasier (when it's not up against one of the above)
    Letterman/Leno when there's something to watch and I'm not so annoyed by the commercials I turn the sumbitch off and open winamp

    Now, watch any of those prime time shows (except the ones on PBS) and note carefully all the product placement. Then note the comments in the article about fast fo

  • In the article, it mentions that the 'popular' TV shows have a higher ad-skip ratio. This worries me, as I can easily see companies deciding they want to spend money where the ads will be seen, therefore going to the less popular shows, getting the popular shows canceled (since they don't generate revenue).

    Not that they would conciously try to kill the shows people like to watch, just that the economics seem to say those are the shows that won't get funded.

    Could this do to TV what the top-40 format has
    • A smaller percentage of a large number is often more actual people than a large percentage of a small number of people.

      In other words, would you rather your ad be seen by 5% of 1,000,000 people, or 75% of 500 people?
      To use the numbers from the article, The Practice had 8.9% of viewers, and they watched 30% of the ads. That's 2.67% of viewers. The Weakest Link viewers, being 0.9% of viewers, would have to record commercials and watch them three times each to match that.

  • How do they know if I'm watching live? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Fazlazen ( 626923 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:34PM (#6315093) Journal
    I don't see how they would know if I'm watching a program live. If I'm running at the tip of the live feed, then I'm not going to be pressing any buttons during the program. Sure, I hardly ever make it through a program without using the -8 seconds button at least once, or pausing it.

    The article discusses how some live events and reality television have a larger percentage of watched ads. I would guess that would be because most people watch those shows when they're actually being broadcast, as opposed to watching them later. It would be more interesting to see statistics of what % of the commercials are watched when it was watched live versus what % people are watching when watching it previously recorded.

    For the live/reality events, those are conversation pieces for some people at work the next day (*gasp* Did you see who the Bachelor picked?). I'd bet that those programs are watched live more, and therefore people are unable to skip the commercials.

  • Well, I don't. With the internet, I'd rather sit and read news, websites, stories, etc than fry my brain watching TV. In fact, the most recent TV show I watched was an episode of Futurama I downloaded. As far as normal programming, I barely watch it.

    I'd rather read, or exercise. I don't need no stinking TV.

  • strategies (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OpenMind(tm) ( 129095 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:40PM (#6315123)
    Since I gotten my Tivo, I've noticed the rise of one trick that I see as a Tivo busting strategy. About a year ago, I noticed they started moving movie advertisements to the front of blocks of commercials a lot. The idea being, I think, that Tivo users are more likely to go back and watch a movie trailer, and once they are one commercial in, they'll probably just let the rest of the break play out. It worked on me for a little while. I'm curious if this is intentional, or if it is just movie advertising paying big money for preffered placement.

  • Friday blowout! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:51PM (#6315192) Journal
    The ads are ANNOYING!

    I hate the little dramas they try to play out as if we're supposed to believe we're seeing real people. I don't care if some damn, whiny bitch isn't feeling "fresh". Welcome to the world of evolution and genetics. You don't feel fresh. I lose my hair at age 40 and my refractory period has hit 2 weeks. Welcome to the Miserable Hearts Club. Now shut up about it.

    Or the stupid jingles or the grating voiceovers. Everyone sounds like a used car salesman or a politician. Everybody in ad-land has happy nuclear familes in Whitebreadville, except for the Black targeted ads that are invariably accompanied by some sort of stereotypical blues jingle. I wanna see a Burger King commercial with Menace Klan's "Kill Whitey" in the background. Have a BK Fish, G, and tap some of that ass!

    Or any alcohol ad. "You're all losers, so you need to dull your mind even further before you can have fun! May we suggest you consume large quantites of our cheap, watery beer. Oh, and drink responsibly! Wink! Wink!" Jackass, if I wanted to drink responsibly, I'd have a glass of orange juice. Wink wink at my spinchter, assface.

    Whatever happened to those goddamned Mentos commercials? Mentos - breath mint of the master race. Christ, I don't even know what that meant! And if anyone actually smiled as wide as they do in toothpaste commercials, their brains would pop out. I guess it's a good thing that these dogfood grade morons with the idiot grins plastered on their botoxed lippage don't have brains in the first place.

    And smoker's toothpolish. How dick is that? "Bob! You quit smoking!" says whore. "DID I?" says Bob. "Hmm, no. I guess not," says whore. "I can still smell the fetid stench of your filthy brain damaged habit wafting from your smoke encrusted clothing. Bleah. It's an extra $200 if you expect me to deal with your Marlboro funk."

    Argh! Don't get me started on commercials!

  • If anything, isn't Tivo cutting its own throat? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @04:54PM (#6315216)
    I thought Tivo was already concerned about the entertainment/advertising biz getting teed off about viewers skipping commercials (hence Tivo's lack of a "30-second-skip" button). So now they're going to give them hard data showing exactly how bad it is? Seems like an odd strategy.

  • Ads need to be designed for PVRs (Score:3, Informative)

    by harlows_monkeys ( 106428 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @05:07PM (#6315325) Homepage
    I still watch some commercials with my UTV. When a commercial comes on, I have to pick up the remote, and hit the ~30 second skip until I recognize I've skipped the block of ads, then hit the ~7 second backward skip to back up to where the show resumed.

    This means I almost always see the first couple of seconds of the first ad, and if it is interesting, I'll watch it.

    Same goes for the last ad in the block...I'll see the end of it, and if the end is very interesting, I'll back up and watch.

    So, to reach me, the best shot the advertisers have is at the ends of commercial blocks. An ad in the middle only has a chance if it is so interesting that in the time it it takes me to recognize it is not the show as I skip past, I'll be grabbed, or if the ad next to it is interesting enough that I decide to watch that neighbor ad, and while skipping to the start of that, the other ad catches me.

    That gives these rules for ads if you want the PVR crowd to see them:

    1. The first and last spot in the block are the most valuable.

    2. The first ad in the block needs be interesting from the beginning.

    3. The last ad in the block needs to end in a way that will be interesting to people who haven't seen the begining of the ad.

    4. The value of interior spots depends on what is around them.

    5. A clever advertiser could use this to try to get people to skip the following ads, which might make it more likely the consumer will remember their ad. For example, instead of spending all 30 seconds on your product, do a 20 second interesting ad, and a 10 second boring ad or public service announcement or something--the idea is to give people some time to start skipping before some other company's ad can start. If the only ad people see during a break is yours, you've won.

  • ...at least, not forever. Sure, we're going to have to put up with various forms of broadcast TV as a push medium for a while, but the time is coming when we're going to end up with only video-on-demand, with perhaps very limited broadcast still existing for the more or less disconnected. Wireless networking is getting faster and cheaper all the time, as technologies are wont to do. Anyone with a DOCSIS cable modem and a decent PC (say, in the 700MHz area) has the necessary equipment to watch video on demand. The fact that no one is really providing it (except for a few test markets) mostly tells us that the consumers are not yet ready.

    You may have noticed that a lot of major websites make you watch a couple of commercials before watching a video clip these days. This is essentially the way television is going to work in the future. You'll have a dedicated device or piece of software (Hello, "trusted" computing platforms) which reads and interprets the incoming streams, and requires you to do something interactive in between chunks of a program in order to continue watching it. Hardcore hackers will of course find a way to automate these processes and avoid watching commercials just as they have always circumvented stupidity, but this will keep the vast majority of people on the straight and narrow path, so to speak.

    Of course, it's going to be a while before that happens; Content creators and providers who are tied to the current infrastructure and their investments in it -- read: broadcast television outlets and media networks -- will continue to try to legislate rather than innovate. While you can expect them to enjoy some limited success (We have seen some already) ultimately they will have to solve the problem with technology.

    and progress is a message that we send one step closer to the future one inch closer to the end I say progress is a synonym of time we are all aware of it but it's nothing we refine

  • How to really stop ad fast forwarding (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @06:12PM (#6315703)
    TiVo's doing this the right way. They're not telling the ad execs who skipped their ad, they're telling the ad execs how many people skipped their ad... 80% of the people watching the show you sponsored over a TiVo think your ad wasn't worth their time.

    In contrast, TiVo points out that there almost always are several ads that air during the Super Bowl that actually get people to rewind back to them to see the ad again... wow, an ad that's so good people actually want to see it, what a concept!

    TiVo's good at brokering this kind of compromise between the industry and end users, as opposed to Microsoft whose DVR errored in being too pro-industry and ReplayTV whose DVR errored in being too anti-industry. TiVo seems to be able to come up with a product that both expands user's abilities and keeps the industry lawyers away...

  • More popular shows still get more ads played (Score:4, Informative)

    by rollingcalf ( 605357 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @06:16PM (#6315739)
    "On April 11, 2002, ABC's popular TV drama The Practice drew a TiVo rating of 8.9, meaning 8.9% of TiVo owners watched the show live or recorded it and watched it later. But those viewers watched just 30% of the ads shown. Meanwhile, quiz show The Weakest Link, drew a rating of 0.9, but viewers watched 78% of the commercials. TV news magazine 60 Minutes got only a 2.2 rating, but its viewers sat through 73% of the ads."

    Even though the percentage of ads skipped increases with the popularity of the show, the popular shows still get more ads played through overall.

    With the 8.9 show above, 30% of that show's viewers played the ads, which means those ads were played through by 30% of 8.9% = 2.67% of viewers. With the 0.9 show, 78% of its viewers played the ads, and 78% of 0.9% = 0.702% overall. So the ads that air with the most popular shows still get the most eyeballs, despite the inverse relationship mentioned in the article.

  • There's 3 types of ads (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cro Magnon ( 467622 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @06:43PM (#6315910) Homepage Journal
    1. Ads I watch on purpose. These are very rare, and usually involve pretty girls in skimpy outfits. Humor can snare me too, but most advertisers are too clueless to do it right.

    2. Ads I ignore. This is 90% of the TV ads. If I'm watching live I'll probably see/hear part of it while I go to the bathroom/kitchen/stick my nose in a book. Otherwise, I'll FF past it.

    3. Ads I can't stand. Bad sound effects will piss me off everytime. If I'm watching delayed, I'll FF past it. If I'm watching live, I'll "mute" until the show resumes, then pause for 15 minutes to ensure I won't have to suffer through any more commercials! If I didn't have the option of FFing or muteing, I'd go bonkers, destroy the TV with an axe, then go after the advertiser!

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