The New York Times has a story about how Tivo is finally making in-roads with advertisers, after many were initially mad at the company since it allowed viewers to fast-forward through ads.
In recent years, Tivo has been moving away from being a technology company that had to deal with hardware and subscriptions into a media/ratings company that is dealing with services.
How has it made this change?
- Creating a DVR Ratings Service. Its recently unveiled Stop|Watch service allows advertisers to track “second by second” movements by DVR viewers. This gives a more accurate count of who’s watching ads, how many people skip ads, most popular Season Pass shows and other top-rated shows. Tivo says its DVR ratings service has a larger panel than Nielsen’s (20,00 vs. 3,000). NBC recently became a subscriber.
- Partnering with Advertisers. Rather than becoming enemies with advertisers, Tivo has grown into a media partner, giving them new ways to promote their products to their users.
- Creating New, Effective and Creative Ad Solutions. Because Tivo breaks new ground, it must also change how it advertises. As such it has created numerous new advertising buys including:
- End of Show Text Ads. When a show ends, viewers are shown a short one line ad about a new show that they might want to watch. Or some other product that comes with a pre-downloaded video that viewers can watch for more information.
- Thumbs Up/Record From Commercial. If you happen to watch (or fast forward through) commercials, you can see a thumbs up icon pasted on top of the screen. This allows viewers to hit their Thumbs Up button on their Tivo remote and record a show that’s being advertised.
- Featured on Now Playing Screen. Sometimes ads appear just on the Now Playing menu, which is the menu that users go when they want to view their pre-recorded TV shows. A text ad sits on the bottom of the menu. If a viewer clicks on it, they are taken to an action screen with more information and possible a video/commercial to watch.
The Times story also said that things are looking up for Tivo in other ways. The lawsuit against EchoStar is progressing in Tivo’s favor, which may add substantial revenue if it finally gets the $90 million it was awarded (but is still in appeal).
Which means Tivo my soon be in a better place financially:
According to Tony Wible, an analyst with Citigroup, television networks now “have to embrace DVR advertising, and TiVo is a leader there.” He added that “the NBC deal adds a lot of credibility to that business, which I think could be as big or bigger as the current DVR business today.” He predicted that TiVo could start to break even in its quarterly earnings within a year.
