ere’s an oxymoronic term you may see pop up soon: ‘adver-blogs’. It’s one of those things that try to play opposite roles and end up having very little impact. Adver-blogs, in case you are wondering, are ads that pretend to be genuine ‘blogs’ (or weblogs). No different from infomercials in the TV era, I will wager that this odd marriage of advertising and blogs is not the future of a new era of marketing. But there is another device that may allow us to peep over the wall into that future, and it comes to you from TiVo, the chief mischief maker in television advertising.
First, a quick recap on TiVo and the hullabaloo it has already created. TiVo introduced the world to the Digital Video Recorder (often referred to as the DVR), an idea quickly duplicated by other vendors. The DVR, like the VCR of yore, is a classical ‘disruptive technology’ because of its ability to record programmes off TV and cable, bypassing the ads. It’s basically a small set-top box with a hard drive, so it allows someone to store hours and hours of television and then fast-forward past the ads. TiVo and the time-shifting option it brings is different from the way VCRs do the same thing, in that it allows a viewer to pause a live programme in its tracks and view it, say, 15 minutes later. How? The set-top box is constantly recording the programming, so ‘pausing’ and starting 15 minutes later means watching the saved portion of programme, off the hard drive. Then, during a commercial break, the viewer can fast-forward past the commercials, thereby catching up with the broadcast in real time. Serious TiVo users habitually start watching a two-hour movie about half an hour after the actual broadcast. By skipping past about two commercial breaks, they save themselves about 20 minutes of their life! Advertisers hated it. Ad agencies feared it would make the ‘interruptive’ model of commercials obsolete. But the smart ones are still finding creative ways – aggressive product placement, for instance – around this audience power tool.
But there’s a new angle to this story. TiVo is not going to stand around being branded as an anti-advertiser WMD. That’s why it is coming up with a new feature called ‘tags’, which are basically icons or logos that appear even when a commercial is being fast-forwarded. The purpose? To make the viewer think again about skipping the ads, and perhaps click on the tag with the remote. (You don’t need me to point out how similar in function the TV remote is becoming to a mouse…) I believe this is just round two of the TiVo revolution, cozying up to advertisers. If round one (being the couch potato’s way to banish advertising) was the yin, then round two is the yang.
Embedded icons or tags sound great, but there could be more in store. TiVo certainly knows which side of its bread is being buttered. It already harvests viewer demographic and usage data that gives ad agencies precise information about TV audiences – something they always lacked. In the old days of targeting, the Nielsen rating was the ‘science’ offered as proof to clients for expensive media buys. Nielsen Media Research tracks information based on diary entries and ‘people meters’ of a sample of the audience. Its data has always been controversial.
In the digital world, the science of data collection can be so good that it’s almost scary. An advertiser can see, almost in real time, how many people skip a commercial – or how many go back and watch a segment of a programme. The famous example: TiVo’s ability to tell how many times viewers (using TiVo boxes) replayed the Janet Jackson exposed-breast incident, just minutes after the shocking exposé during the Super Bowl last year. In case you’re wondering, there was an 180 per cent increase in the number of times viewers replayed the incident! Last year, Nielsen partnered with TiVo, so advertisers can expect audience data to be more fine-tuned.
Ad agencies, if they are thinking far enough, need to start planning for round three of digital data gathering, when DVR companies will be able to not just provide data but also act like a medium, a content enhancer and a marketing ally. Portable DVR units are not far away and could become as desirable – and tiny – as, say, iPods. These players could be loaded with software that saves advertising in special formats, not just as 30-second commercials. The ads could magically appear as sidebars on a programme or clickable information modules that launch webpages – perfect for those who may be watching TV on portable ‘tablets’ that are part-PC, part-TV and part-jukebox with MP3 capability.
This form of ‘disruptive’ advertising would have to anticipate a consumer who will hardly know when he or she is online or offline, watching live programming or recorded fare, and switch between being in PC mode and TV mode. Already, research is showing that a growing number of people are watching TV and surfing the Web simultaneously! TiVo cites another statistic: up to 20 per cent of viewers, when given an option to ‘participate’ in some form of advertising, will do so. Viewers who actually welcome ads? An ad-blocking device that encourages viewers to watch and respond to marketing? Unlike infomercials and other oxymorons such as ‘rap artist’ and ‘diet ice cream’, the mischievous little DVR just might serve two masters.