TiVo is to mimick Google by offering consumers the chance to search for ads.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that TiVo Inc. is partnering with Interpublic, Omnicom and Publicis’s media buyers with a mind to target consumers who can skip ads using their TiVo DVR. Tom Rogers, TiVo’s president and chief executive says that they are “flipping the dynamic” of traditional tv advertising by allowing subscribers to search for ads that only match their interests. This copies the Google model of advertising where only ads relevant to a keyword search appear.
Starting next spring, TiVo users will be able to set up a profile of products on their television screens by clicking on categories such as automative or travel or by typing in keywords like ‘BMW’. TiVo will then regularly download relevant commercials to TiVo recorders over the Internet, or send the video via traditional broadcast signals. The commercials will appear on-screen in a folder next to the list of television shows TiVo viewers record. Advertisers will be able to select the keywords and categories with which they wish to be associated. One payment model being discussed is to let advertisers bid on keywords as they do when buying ads on Google.
It remains to be seen whether viewers will buy-in to this model of ‘advertising on demand’, particularly when a major part of TiVo’s charm has been to allow them to avoid advertising all together. Moreover, Google’s success lies in the subtlety of the advertising message - with many consumers failing to notice the difference between a paid-for search result and a normal one.
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