Tuesday, July 22, 2008

TiVo And Amazon Create New Media Commerce Platform


Disruptive technology that initially hurt TV advertising, might actually be its savior.

Time shifted viewing and the TiVo (DVR) are disrupting TV viewing. More eyeballs leave TV, advertisers need a dynamic service for digital video recorders (DVRs).

From The N.Y. Times TiVo And Amazon team Up

TiVo, the Silicon Valley company that introduced millions to the joy of skipping television commercials, is trying to crack a decades-old media dream. It wants to turn the television remote control into a tool for buying the products being advertised and promoted on commercials and talk shows.

The company, based in Alviso, Calif., will introduce a “product purchase” feature on Tuesday in partnership with the Internet retailer Amazon.com. Owners of TiVo video recorders will see, in TiVo’s various onscreen menus, links to buy products like CDs, DVDs and books that guests are promoting on talk shows like “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Late Show With David Letterman” and “The Daily Show.”

The move highlights TiVo’s attempt to shift from being a creator of set-top boxes, competing with copycat devices, to being an advertising innovator that is trying to develop advertising technologies for the television industry.

Just a few years ago, we were viewed with great paranoia as the disruptor,” said Thomas S. Rogers, chief executive of TiVo. “Our goal now is to work with the media industry to come up with ways to resist the downward pressure of less advertising viewing and create a way for advertising on TV to become more effective, more engaging and closer to the sale.”

But beware, Microsoft has a new "TV stopping patent".

The patent, which Microsoft originally applied for in 1993, enables the company to develop and market technology that allows television viewers to pause programmes to follow on-screen hyperlinks and participate in games, chat rooms and other interactive services.

What's bigger than all of these services?

The "Next Google" will be able to collect data, second-by-second, from all services/devices connected to the broadband pipe and deliver relevant advertising to ANY display.
The kicker...it already exists.

From the CEO " the ability to report actual anonymous second-by-second program and advertising audience viewership data from tens of millions of set top boxes (STB)s represents a huge technological and informational leap from today's television measurement standard"

"We currently have access to 500,000 set-top-boxes (STBs) made available to us through different network operators from multiple TV markets from which we are collecting, aggregating and reporting anonymous, second-by-second data to our development partners."

The Next Google is here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree, The next google is here. Imagine the kind of data collection that can be done by such an extensive network of set top boxes.

No Name said...

Kerry,

I am almost finished writing a report that outlines what The Next Google can do, and who has that capability now.