eric rochow : social media handyman

I’ve always liked the idea of having a Tivo, but never quite trusted the idea that it connects back to Tivo and had the capability of monitoring what you watch. a bit of Big Brother i’d rather not participate in. (watch now as i buy a Tivo next month…)

I’ve always thought that the log of a Tivo user would be more relevant than Nielsen ratings, and now we learn, from the Advertising column of the NY Times, that Tivo is:

starting a research division to sell data about how its 4.4 million users watch commercials — or, more often, skip them.

The service is based on an analysis of the second-by-second viewing patterns of a nightly sample of 20,000 TiVo users, whose recorders report back to TiVo on what was watched and when.

New York Times, July 26, 2006

Commercials with animals get watched more, according to Tivo.

Commercials featuring animal characters, when shown on animal-related programs, were skipped less often than usual.

Tivo has found, by studying the habits of its 4.4 million users, that when watching a recorded program, users skip 70% of the commercials. This newly mined data from Tivo will help advertisers determine what content gets watched.

In the long run, I still believe the traditional :30 spot is a thing of the recent past, and we will see even more integrated marketing built right into the programming. MTV is a good example of how succesful this can be. {full disclosure here: MTV is a client of my firm, choplogic, inc.}

Yes, i know one can’t go or do most anything these days without leaving a trail, so there may be a Tivo in my future, so i fill up yet another hard drive with media i need to do something with.