Wednesday, November 29, 2006

TiVo Tries Long Form Ads

TiVo needs advertising revenue to survive and is now asking customers to watch long form ads. Subscribers can choose to watch "Program Placement" ads when they are in the process of deleting programs.

TiVo says that since the ads don't run within the program they don't have to share the ad revenue with the media companies, according to Reuters. That won't help them to gain the support of the media companies that are their essential partners, so I'd recommend that they give a token amount back to the program providers. TiVo can target ads to particular shows and track their performance, so they need to throw the networks a bone in hopes that they might want to buy into the system.

The company has lined up several national advertisers including Burger King that will run ads up to 2 minutes in length. This puts a hefty burden on the creative agencies to come up with killer spots. Filling several minutes that go beyond "we sell burgers and fries" is no simple chore.

DVRs are changing the rules of the game -- advertisers can no longer throw together spots and expect millions of people to pay attention. Advertising needs to be content and compete with programs in terms of quality, which given what we see during prime time shouldn't be so tough.

By John Gartner at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

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