Some TiVo viewers to get pop-up screen ads
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — After years of helping TV viewers skip past commercials, digital video recorder (DVR) pioneer TiVo made ads a little harder to avoid on Monday.
It said General Motors and The WB Network are the first companies to pay for a feature that inserts pop-up ads, filling close to 25% of the TV screen, when certain subscribers fast-forward through their conventional commercials. The feature affects only the 1.2 million TiVo DVRs that download programming data and software directly from the company. It will not be seen on TVs hooked up to the 2.1 million DVRs that receive TiVo's service through DirecTV. "It's up to (DirecTV) as to whether they want to take advantage" of the feature, says TiVo CFO David Courtney.
Comcast, which will begin to offer TiVo service in 2006, has said it's interested in the company's interactive advertising initiatives. But it hasn't specifically signed up for the pop-up ads.
Courtney declined to say how much revenue TiVo might generate from the pop-up ads. That is important for the company: It has told investors that it will become profitable in the last quarter of this fiscal year, which ends in January.
"It's an encouraging development for TiVo, but it doesn't change the financial outlook in the short run," says Harris Nesbitt analyst Leland Westerfield. "It's a footbridge, not the Golden Gate Bridge, to the digital ad age."
Subscribers cannot opt out of the service. Courtney says he doesn't know what would appear on the screen when viewers skip ahead in 30-second increments.
While it's not an officially approved feature, many subscribers use instructions widely available on the Internet to program their TiVos to jump past ads instead of fast-forwarding through them. But Courtney said that consumers in market tests generally approved of the pop-ups. The research showed that "viewers only want to skip through ads when they're irrelevant or not entertaining."
Viewers who see GM's pop-up ads can push a button to view long promotions for GMC, Chevrolet and Saturn vehicles and OnStar service. "This is a step forward in allowing consumers to shop and discover the GM portfolio of products in a revolutionary new way," says Betsy Lazar, GM's general director, advertising and media operations.
For WB, viewers can press a button to schedule their TiVo to record shows it's promoting and see more footage. "Our viewers are younger and eagerly adapt themselves to new technologies," WB Co-President of Marketing Lew Goldstein says.
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By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — After years of helping TV viewers skip past commercials, digital video recorder (DVR) pioneer TiVo made ads a little harder to avoid on Monday.
It said General Motors and The WB Network are the first companies to pay for a feature that inserts pop-up ads, filling close to 25% of the TV screen, when certain subscribers fast-forward through their conventional commercials. The feature affects only the 1.2 million TiVo DVRs that download programming data and software directly from the company. It will not be seen on TVs hooked up to the 2.1 million DVRs that receive TiVo's service through DirecTV. "It's up to (DirecTV) as to whether they want to take advantage" of the feature, says TiVo CFO David Courtney.
Comcast, which will begin to offer TiVo service in 2006, has said it's interested in the company's interactive advertising initiatives. But it hasn't specifically signed up for the pop-up ads.
Courtney declined to say how much revenue TiVo might generate from the pop-up ads. That is important for the company: It has told investors that it will become profitable in the last quarter of this fiscal year, which ends in January.
"It's an encouraging development for TiVo, but it doesn't change the financial outlook in the short run," says Harris Nesbitt analyst Leland Westerfield. "It's a footbridge, not the Golden Gate Bridge, to the digital ad age."
Subscribers cannot opt out of the service. Courtney says he doesn't know what would appear on the screen when viewers skip ahead in 30-second increments.
While it's not an officially approved feature, many subscribers use instructions widely available on the Internet to program their TiVos to jump past ads instead of fast-forwarding through them. But Courtney said that consumers in market tests generally approved of the pop-ups. The research showed that "viewers only want to skip through ads when they're irrelevant or not entertaining."
Viewers who see GM's pop-up ads can push a button to view long promotions for GMC, Chevrolet and Saturn vehicles and OnStar service. "This is a step forward in allowing consumers to shop and discover the GM portfolio of products in a revolutionary new way," says Betsy Lazar, GM's general director, advertising and media operations.
For WB, viewers can press a button to schedule their TiVo to record shows it's promoting and see more footage. "Our viewers are younger and eagerly adapt themselves to new technologies," WB Co-President of Marketing Lew Goldstein says.
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